The Martlet

To the provincial government, with love — sincerely, the students of UVic.

In an effort to open up dialogue with the premier and her MLAs about post-secondary funding, the UVic Student’s Society (UVSS) is putting a festive spin on its lobbying tactics this Valentine’s season.

The UVSS plans on sending personalized Valentine’s Day cards to Premier Christy Clark and Minister of Advanced Education Naomi Yamamoto in hopes of drawing their attention to several debt-related issues currently faced by B.C students.

The initiative is a variation of the ongoing “Where’s the Funding” (WTF) campaign — a collaborative effort of seven student unions across the province that represent over 120 000 tuition-paying members.

“We re-did the look of the [WTF] campaign to make it fun, positive and really engaging to students on campus, people in the community and politicians,” says UVSS Director-at-Large Lucia Orser, who is spearheading the Valentine’s-themed initiative along with Director-at-Large Ariel Tseng.

“[We wanted] to design a campaign that was more personalized,” says Tseng. “Though volume-based petitions are great, campaigns where you can engage with people for longer hits a different demographic.”

Politicians have a tendency to brush off petitions and take them less seriously than they would a letter or email, says Tseng, who acknowledges that simply collecting signatures from busy students often leaves the issues themselves unexplored.

“It’s always difficult a lot of times to get people engaged, that’s one of the biggest struggles in politics,” Tseng says. “A lot of people will sign a petition [without] reading much into it.”

But both Tseng and Orser believe that personalizing the Valentine’s Day cards opens up a forum for students to voice their individual concerns to the politicians directly, while at the same time educating themselves on the issues through discussion with WTF organizers.

They say the campaign is less about getting signatures and more about accessing information and encouraging proactive participation — a more intimate process than the traditional clipboard method.

“We may end up talking to less people,” says Tseng. “But we’re talking to less people for more.”

“The primary objective in this campaign is to get people understanding and talking about what affordable education means to them,” says Orser.“It’s about having those valuable conversations and explaining to people how [the issue] relates to their experience at university.”

The card bomb is aimed at furthering the original three demands prioritized by WTF: eliminating interest rates on student loans, re-establishing a provincial needs-based grants program and increasing overall core funding to institutions.

Currently, B.C is the only province in Canada without a needs-based grant program. The system also burdens indebted students with a 2.5 per cent interest rate on their loans — the highest in the country.

With $127 million going toward subsidies in the oil and gas industry, WTF campaigners believe that the roughly $30 million needed to eliminate interest rates altogether is a small price to pay for student financial security.

“It’s time for the B.C. government to follow suit and stop making money off students’ backs . . . investing in post-secondary students is an investment in B.C.’s economy,” says the WTF official website.

The cards will be presented at a press conference held during next month’s throne speech when the provincial budget is released, which Orser says will give WTF the opportunity to bring its goals to the public’s attention.

“With the provincial election coming up next year, it’s a really good time to start putting pressure on the government,” Orser says. “It’s a really important time when you’re doing lobby work.”

“This is the time when you’ve got the most pull.”

Valentine’s Day cards are available at the WTF booth in the SUB.