UVIC Students Society holds off Military Offensive

Student politics at B.C. Universities never cease to bemuse this page. It's always a marginal handful of idealistic go-getters who run for actually run for office, and are subsequently ignored by an apathetic student population. When a students union or society use whatever mandate has been left lying around for them to make an actual, honest, courageous decision, the hitherto oblivious backpack horde screams bloody murder and yelps for heads to roll.

Such is the case with the University of Victoria Students Society banning the Canadian Armed Forces from an upcoming career fair at their Student Union Building. According to President Tracey Ho, the Student Society executive believes that recruiters are less than upfront about the 'psychological, emotional, and physical impact' that Armed Forces personnel face when approaching potential recruits. This page can't confirm that point specifically, but I do know that at the Forces' pavilion at last month's Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver, I had a very difficult getting any of troops to mention the word 'Afghanistan'. By the way, the souvenir 'Support Our Troops' dog tags you passed out at taxpayers' expense were a nice touch.

Nonetheless, the good little boys and girls at UVIC who vote Conservative like their mommies and daddies feel so upset by their ELECTED representatives that they're passing around a petition to have the entire Student Society Executive removed from office. Unlike the Student Society elections where candidates debated the issues in hostile obscurity, the wannabe chickenhawks are aided and abetted by such champions of free speech as the Globe and Mail's Gary Mason, who described the Society's decision as "an insult to the intelligence" of UVIC's student body.

Wrong. The real insult, added to injury, is exposing students, who are facing academic and financial pressures far more crushing than any class before them, to recruiters hungry for fresh meat to grind on the Kandahar killing fields. Any UVIC student who is that gung-ho to serve is more than welcome (and intelligent enough) to report to 827 Fort Street in Victoria from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM, Noon to 4:00 on Saturdays. A career fair isn't about 'getting both sides of the story', it's about getting a job. Do the upset UVIC students think it would have been better if the Forces were invited and their efforts ended up getting disrupted by demonstrating peace activists?

This is what happens when you don't pay attention to who's running for office, and you don't vote. If you can't be bothered to exercise your democratic freedoms, suck it up and don't cry to the media about how the army can't come to your school to tell you about how they're 'protecting' your freedoms.