The Martlet

Editor’s note: This article was written with the collaboration and co-operation of UVic Pride, SOCC, the Women’s Collective and the NSU.

The students of UVic have, in the most recent election, voted down a referendum providing four on-campus advocacy groups with extra funding. While they were disappointed with the decision, the groups believe the reasons for opposing the increase were not founded on accurate premises.

A glance at the comments of the online Martlet article reveals a worrying group of observations about the organizations.

Advocacy groups are neither exclusive nor segregationist. Advocacy groups do not oppose groups of people, but rather groups of ideas. The counterpoint to the Women’s Center is not men, nor is the counter to the Native Student Union non-indigenous people. What the Students of Color Collective fight are not Caucasians, and the Pride collective does not wage war against heterosexuals. If you believe they do, test this theory.

Walk to the door of any of the advocacy groups and ask them what they do. Regardless of who you are, no one will say, “Get out of our way, we’re moving forward on our own time.” They’ll look you in the eye and say, “Here’s how you can help.”

Racism, patriarchy and homophobia are the opposition, and anyone who can bring something helpful to work against those forces is welcome. Working toward the reduction and eventual erasure of those systems is a valid and difficult goal, and volunteering is no longer enough for continued effectiveness.

Every year, students enter and exit these organizations, do their work and sit on their boards. Though they may do this for their entire university career, at the end of their degree the boards will be made up of completely different individuals.

Without paid staff positions given to students and ex-students alike, organizations have no memory — the solutions to the problems faced by these groups become lost or, at best, relegated to binders, e-mails and sticky notes with no guarantee that these solutions will be implemented, or even remembered, the next term.

I sympathize with the student body in some of the rationale of their decision. Financially, there are future worries. Supporting groups that do not cater to all students is something that perhaps not all students support. What must be noted is that all of these groups do, in fact, support the entire student body, albeit in an indirect manner.

Remember, you may not be queer, female, indigenous or of colour, but can you say the same for your friends? Your family? Your respected classmates? Opposing racism, sexism, homophobia and oppression in general means that people who are oppressed will always have a wide, broad and effective support system.

Opposing oppression doesn’t only benefit those directly oppressed. All systems are improved when groups are equalized and individuals can reach their full potential. In addition to being unfair, it damages the output of ideas. These groups remove the barriers that prevent students of marginalized groups from being the best they could possibly be.

Now, because all four groups oppose the same basic family of ideas, they often choose to work together. They do this for a few reasons. Solidarity is important, because we all have the responsibility to fight oppression.

Also, there’s no guarantee that every group is itself free of oppressive ideologies. Just because one group opposes one form of prejudice doesn’t mean that it won’t suffer from another. Working in close proximity to one another allows us to keep an eye on each other, to hold each other to the same scrutiny that the rest of the world should be held to.

All of this requires sacrifice. Volunteers sacrifice their time, talents and effort to promote positive changes in the world. It also costs money. Money for paid positions. Money for events. Money for the very basics of operation. Like all organizations, we pay for utilities for the use of the rooms that we occupy, and those costs keep going up. They are unavoidable.

Sacrificing money at a time like this is difficult to do. The four groups mentioned above, however, will try again.

What they ask for now is for the student body to sacrifice a little bit of itself in other ways. Come and learn about them. Come and find out how you can help and, while you do that, find out exactly what they do, how they do it and why they think that doing it is important.

Lend a hand. Lend a voice. Lend a pair of eyes and ears and, after you see and hear what they are, go tell your friends about it. And when the next referendum comes around, grab some more information before you vote it down.