York students: silenced or unmoved?

When I started my term as editor-in-chief last May, I was pretty naive.
The vision I pitched in my job interview was one of Excalibur as a driving force for change on campus.
This has proven to be difficult though. The truth is, it’s hard to put out an exciting paper when on the surface, our campus can seem so dead.
Excalibur’s archives paint a picture of York that is unfamiliar to me—a York where students had some serious fight in them.
When they didn’t like something, instead of sitting around and complaining, they stood up and protested.
Whether they were opposed to a speaker coming to campus, an atrocity happening abroad, or a tuition fee hike, they gathered and made their views known.
One reason I came to York in the first place was its political culture. I had seen a 2009 video of a massive protest happening in Vari Hall, where passionate demonstrators on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict engaged in an important, heated debate. The tension was palpable.
While I’m not trying to romanticize aggression and I know protests can breed antagonism, I wanted to be in an environment where people were thinking progressively and wanted to make a difference.
But it seems like this culture of activism has left York. I don’t know what changed, but it’s certainly not that people now have nothing to protest about.
Some believe it was the installation of the kiosk in the middle of Vari Hall, others say it is the increasing corporatization of the university as a whole, and others still believe there are policies at York which seriously undermine students’ rights to assemble.
Have students stopped caring? Or have they been intimidated into silence?
There are issues I hear about in everyday conversation, from the rights of marginalized groups to how the university spends its money, that I know students care about deeply.
I’ve seen some efforts to bring these issues to light, but mainly in the form of petitions and online debates.
There are also those individuals who are fighting quietly but diligently, like Tamika Johnson, whose work on Boss Magazine we featured in our last issue.
When it comes to gathering on campus, however, we have been failing. Last year, a student-organized safety rally, which was supposed to have 1,000 attendees ended up attracting less than 100 people. No one wanted to stand outside in the cold.
Students Against Israeli Apartheid, whose club status was revoked last spring for holding an unauthorized rally in Vari Hall that “disrupted classes,” has a point. Vari Hall is the heart of this campus, and students need their gathering place back.
But more importantly, students need to realize the value of organized protest again.
If you look to our centrespread this week, we’ve tried to show the evolution and importance of activism at York. You’ll get a glimpse of what York used to be, which I hope inspires you.
This year, I wanted to highlight the efforts of those who were fighting for a cause. I just wish I’d had more to talk about.
Tamara Khandaker
Editor-in-Chief