I’m going to be honest, I’m kind of angry right now.
I got a message to check the status of my OSAP
application for the fall, opened it up and found this:
“Your OSAP application has been compared to your two most recent
study periods and there is evidence that you may not be satisfactorily
progressing through your program. For example, you may have made multiple
program or institution switches, or taken multiple one-year programs or
you may have multiple study periods for the same year of your program.
Before any OSAP funding can be released, a review of your
academic progress is required. In order to initiate that review, you must
provide the following documentation:
- A letter explaining your academic goals, the
circumstances (if any) that have affected your academic progression
through your program and the steps you are taking to achieve your goals.
- A copy of transcripts showing your grades from your
most recent study period. You do not have to purchase official
transcripts.
- Documentation that supports the circumstances and steps
you’ve described in your letter, if applicable (for example, medical
documentation, or a letter from your academic counsellor).
Contact your financial aid office to discuss the review process
and your situation to ensure that you provide the documentation needed to
support your situation. If you are attending a private career college in
Ontario or a school outside Ontario, contact the Ministry.”
Overall it’s pretty ridiculous because I’m one of the
lucky people that does well in our (extremely imperfect, but that’s another
conversation) school system: I’ve taken a full course load every term, gotten
straight A’s, and am perfectly on stream for my co-op program, that is supposed to take five years alternating
between school and work.
At first, I was mad because it’s going to be annoying
dealing with this, and clearly OSAP has just fudged up and the system doesn’t understand
how co-op works. Ultimately, however, in the long run it will be fine.
But then I thought about it some more and this is what
really angers me:
So
what if I was taking 5-6
years to do a 4 year program?
University is hard. Every single university in Canada
has a Mental Health Crisis, because our country is in a mental health crisis,
and if I were dealing with mental
health issues, I wouldn’t need this bullshit. Period.
Students with mental health issues and/or students who
require other accommodations already have a big burden placed on them to get
accommodations at all – they need to do things like navigate a bureaucratic,
frustrating accessibility system (yes many accessibility offices at
Universities are inaccessible for one or more reasons); take time to get
doctors notes, which are sometimes expensive (and thus inaccessible), which
also takes time away from studying and working on assignments; and disclose
personal information to strangers. This is often an emotional, stressful,
time-consuming process.
If I needed to take time off school because of mental
and emotional health I should not have to be running around trying to justify
my existence.
Or maybe I needed to take some time off school to take
care of family, I should not have to explain these personal choices to the
government.
Or maybe I took some time off school to work and save
up. I should not be forced to explain the personal circumstances of my life to
strangers.
Or maybe I just wanted to take some time off school to
find myself and figure out what I really want. That should be fine too. Of course
people will be switching schools, and programs, most of us were 17 or 18 when
choosing our universities, we didn’t know what we wanted to do.
And all this pressure from society to finish
university in 4 years is ridiculous, we see it when we learn about successful
friends and feel bad about where we are in our lives, we get it from well
intentioned relatives asking us what we plan on doing after we graduate, and
now to also be getting these same pressures from the government, is absurd. I
get that this is about wanting to get OSAP loans repaid quickly, but that is not, and should not be a government’s
priority.
A
government’s job is to serve the people, not to balance budgets.
With this system they’re wasting the time of people
who are fine, and placing undue pressure in addition to time burdens on those
who are for whatever reason taking more than 4 years to finish school. As I
mentioned earlier, I’m lucky in that I’m in a good position to be dealing with
this, but the people with the potential
to be most affected are those who are already marginalized.
And
any system that steps on, forgets about or disregards folks who are
marginalized is not good enough.
Everyone
has a different path, sometimes the paths our lives take us on
aren’t straight, but sometimes they need to be that way so we can learn what we
need to.
It
is not the government’s place to tell me what my education should look like.
Not what I should do, where I should go, or how
long I should take.
My
education is for me, so I can grow and make a meaningful
contribution with my life and sure sometimes we need help, support, and a push
in the right direction. And sometimes you just need to trust us.
We
are the experts of our own lives and pressuring us to move along the assembly
line is not how you get informed, engaged, brilliant, forward-thinking,
innovative citizens.
I
don’t have to justify my life to you. Period.
*
With all this said, I want to turn your attention to two things: First, I challenge you to be on the lookout for other policies and procedures that forget about the marginalized. I guarantee that there are more.
Second: Civic Engagement. Regardless of who put in this OSAP issue, we should
make it known that it’s silly. One of the most visible and easiest ways to engage
civically is by voting, and it really matters. Governments Matter. The bills
and laws governments pass aren’t just some random policy that goes up in the
air that doesn’t impact anyone. It is real people facing these consequences.
I’ll give a personal example, several times since the Doug Ford government got
in last year, I have felt the negative effects of their reckless uninformed
decisions, and I know plenty of other people who have had their lives derailed. So
PLEASE:
Get.
Engaged.
VOTE.
In the upcoming federal election in the fall and every subsequent election. In
the meantime, speak to your elected representative, go to a protest, tweet
about it. Do whatever you’re good at; whatever your gift is, use it to make
sure you’re heard. My gift is writing, and that is why you’re reading this
right now.
The
truth is, most people care, they are decent, kind, and have the best intentions.
We need to make that known to politicians. Right now if you
go to elected officials about issues like education, environmental wellbeing,
healthcare, peace-building, and equality, many are going to say they’d love to
help but they just don’t see enough support for it (based on personal
correspondence and the experiences of a colleague. Please let me know if you
want more information). So show them support.
Because it’s not just how many voices, it’s also about
how loud, so let’s speak so loudly that they will never forget.
