I have been reading with interest – and watching in horror – the ongoing crisis of the Architecture Café’s closure. While I wish nothing but the best of luck for students organizing the rally, the petitions, et cetera, I can’t help but reflect that we’ve been here before, we’ve used these tactics, they’ve saved us bits and pieces of student life, and in the end, we keep losing. Yes, we should keep fighting these individual fights, but without an eye to larger goals of a collegially – to say nothing of democratically – run institution (crazy-sounding idea in this day and age), we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past over and over and over. SSMU and the ASA can complain all they want about Mendelson’s “lying” about reconsidering his decision or the way he arrived at this decision, but in the end it was SSMU and ASA’s insistence on “compromise” over the café in the last round of this fight that landed us in this situation. Further – just like almost every year before this – SSMU has a President and a VP UA elected on a platform of – and insistent on – “good relations” with an administration hell-bent on destroying any semblance of student life (to say nothing of power, autonomy, et cetera) on campus.
Maybe it’s just me, but my mind can’t handle that kind of cognitive dissonance. So I wish you luck, dear students, in your efforts to repeatedly run into this brick wall, never contemplating perhaps it’s time to take down that wall… or at least go over it.
Max Silverman
B.A. (Honours) 2010, Canadian Studies