With another calendar year gone and a semester along with it, the hectic reprise of the winter term affords most at Trent University the opportunity to nostalgically reflect upon the months that brought us to the present moment. With six issues of Arthur having thus far gone to print, I feel quite safe in saying it has been a big news year. Whether on the local level with Peterborough’s ongoing housing & homelessness crisis, a recent municipal election, or weeks of protest against Bills 28 and 23, Arthur has been there to cover it all. From a wider lens, last semester bore witness to a World Cup, another year of Trent Homecoming carnage, and the death of a longstanding figurehead of British imperialism. With all this (and more) to divert our collective attention, it can be easy to feel as though some things have been lost in the chatter. Consequently, the recent undertakings of a certain campus group may have flown somewhat under the radar as of late. 

Bearing this in mind, permit me to bring you up to speed a little.

No one can accuse the Trent Central Student Association (TCSA) of having an uneventful year. Having found themselves the subject of a lengthy editorial at the end of last school year, Trent’s nominal undergraduate student union and occasional advocacy group have remained a fan favourite among Arthur staff and readers alike, not least yours truly. In the fall semester, they held their annual Fall By-Elections, which proved a tepid success (depending on who you ask, that is). They equally held a number of events, functions, fairs, and other synonyms thereof, financed by you and your undergraduate fellows!

Perhaps most significantly, however, was the (somewhat) fanfare laden launch of the TCSA’s “Excaliburnt Out” campaign.

The TCSA is no stranger to cheerilly-sloganned graphic designed engagement “campaigns”. Some might even go so far as to call it a modus operandi of theirs. Every year seems to bring with it some grand vision of institutional change, all palatably presented for our infographic sensibilities. Excaliburnt Out then, proves merely a successor—albeit an interesting one emblematic of certain problems endemic to student activism—to a legacy of ineffectual “action” and grand designs long-since consigned to the annals of the Arthur archive.

What follows is a chronicle of the history of this campaign as it has unfolded over the course of the past several months. The continually evolving coverage of this story proved too ungainly and malleable to pin down in a simple op-ed, and consequently ballooned into the sprawling document you’re about to read. Nonetheless, I think it represents both a compelling and comprehensive account of the campaign itself, its ongoing metamorphosis, the response both popular, institutional, and critical, and the direction in which it seems to be headed.

This article also dives deep into the internal politics of the student union, painting a particularly unflattering portrait of the Association’s attitude towards their operational mandate. However, as per our own journalistic mandate and editorial values, we shall not leave this piece open-endedly critical. I would like nothing more than a decisive and effective student union, a sentiment I should hope a good number of my fellow students share. However, that is not what we possess at present, and considerable efforts need to be taken if we are to one day achieve these ends. 

Without further ado I present to you an epic of student activism, institutional apathy, investigative journalism and, of course, smashing pumpkins.

Part 1: “What if We Held a Protest, and Everyone Came?”

On the evening of Wednesday November 9, 2022 I was forwarded an email by Coordinating Editor Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay, titled “Fight for a Better Trent! - We are Excaliburnt Out.” The press release, sent by TCSA VP Campaigns & Equity Aimee Anctil, proves a long-winded and rather impenetrable overview of a confusingly-conceived campaign aimed nominally at “De-corporatizing” Trent University. How exactly the TCSA would affect this change remained unclear. In the email, VP Anctil said she wished “to take action and mobilize together, as one student body, as one student movement.”

The email included a link to a petition, hosted through Trent University’s internal Qualtrics server, to kindly appeal to the university for: “Increased Mental Health Resources; Quality EDID (Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity, Decolonization); Accessible Hybrid Learning; Accountability for the Housing Crisis; and Sustainable Tuition,” though no specific demands, or propositions as to what form this might actually take were provided. Instead, the petition, much like the included posters, infographics, and the announcement email itself, dabbled heavily in generalities and platitudes without clarifying the intentions of the event itself. The promotional images attached were laden with Trent’s own rather fraught sword fetish. The TCSA’s Instagram handle was even misspelled as “@the.tcsa” throughout, a mistake which persisted even after it was pointed out to them in an email from Arthur.

The press release and the accompanying promotional materials implored recipients to “join the protest,” “rally with us,” and “fight for a better Trent!” (all verbatim) juxtaposed with an event agenda including such items as pumpkin smashing, tomato throwing, and free pizza. Reading this in the Arthur offices, Sebastian, and I — both long-time activists engaged in everything from climate strikes, to direct outreach, to labour unions —  were left confounded as to the intentions of the event in question. Dutifully, I continued my journalistic inquiry and reached out to VP Anctil with a series of questions in the hopes of clarifying both the intentions and organization of this initiative. For his part, Sebastian, who is also an active member and Union Steward for CUPE 3908, followed up regarding whether or not the Local — which represents Trent’s course instructors, graduate teaching assistants, and other academic workers at Trent University — had been contacted.  

At time of writing, neither VP Anctil, or any other member of the TCSA, has replied to the Excaliburnt Out-specific inquiries. However, in email and phone correspondence VP Anctil made mention of having communicated with CUPE staff. This surprised us, given the fact Sebastian had already followed up with both CUPE 3908’s President and Office Manager and been told the opposite. Sometimes, it seems, journalists must ask questions to which they already know the answers. So as to avoid embarrassment in such cases, however, a policy of truth on the part of the subject is probably advisable. 

Left effectively in the dark as to what this event would look like and what it intended to accomplish, we laced up our boots to do some on-the-ground investigative work. After Arthur’s Story Meeting on the evening of November 18^th, David King, Sebastian, and I piled into David’s squat and sticker-adorned station wagon, blasted “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” across the grainy sound system, and set off to smash some pumpkins.

Approaching Symons campus, our modest delegation wasn’t sure what to expect. Would the event be highly visible? Would students be out in hordes? Pulling into the closest parking lot to the event at the Athletics Centre revealed little in the way of visible student congregation. We disembarked, expecting to hear music or the raucous sounds the like of the CUPE protests against Bill 28 we’d attended in the weeks before, and which the TCSA, like the university administration they ostensibly oppose, did not acknowledge. Instead, we were greeted only with silence.

The reality, once we finally crested the hill, was disappointing. From what we could see, the event consisted of little more than a huddle of students gathered in and around a couple of TCSA-branded open-side tents, sat beside which was a tarp strewn with the desiccated remains of myriad gutted gourds, immortalized in the now-infamous photo of David King unleashing hellish fury upon an innocent pumpkin. Sheets spray-painted with slogans reading “fight the fees,” and “we are Excaliburnt Out!” hung between trees while 2010s indie-pop whined from a lonesome speaker, punctuating the tableau-like quality of the proceedings. After the offending fruit had been thoroughly pulverized, we continued to explore the environs, taking scope of a hastily-assembled lino-press station featuring stenciled images of angry mobs, fire and pitchforks, and broken swords (though what thematic relation this maintains to Arthurian canon continues to elude me).

Immediately after David stepped off the tarp, the next student in line snapped the baseball bat in half on the very first swing. The remaining pumpkins no doubt breathed a sigh of relief. At loose ends, we migrated towards the fire pit, where cold pizza was doled out and students congregated in small clusters of friends. Per Sebastian’s estimates, there were about sixty people there at its height, though that may well have been a generous guess considering the cold quickly prompted many to abandon the pursuit of standing in a dark and snowy field with no clear reason for doing so. I approached many students, dutifully introducing myself as a member of the press, though of the dozen or so I talked to, none felt comfortable with an interview. Their reasoning? Without fail, each student I asked told me they didn’t know what the event was actually trying to accomplish, and consequently they wouldn’t want to speak on its behalf. This in itself felt more condemnatory than any pull quote.

A TCSA commissioner briefly spoke to those assembled—or rather, those who bothered to listen—about the importance of the Excaliburnt Out petition, saying that more than two-hundred students had already signed it in the week it had been public. Later that night, VP Anctil confirmed in a recorded interview that as of 7:00AM that morning, she believed the petition to have received 284 signatures. For point of reference, that number is just over 3% of Trent’s 9,460 undergraduates enrolled for the 2022/23 school year. Those numbers have scarcely improved over the several months since the campaign’s inception. As of January 2023 only 550 students have signed the petition, and just over 900 “engaged” with the campaign as a whole. To those who’ve read my previous op-ed, this can hardly be a surprise; you’ve seen the student engagement numbers, they’re dismal. A formal petition or referendum question needs to achieve 10% student voter turnout in a TCSA election, on top of majority approval to be ratified. The Excaliburnt Out petition has yet to come close.

When first drafting this piece, my intentions were not to crucify the Association solely for the crimes of insincerity or bad planning. As I’ve stated on countless occasions throughout my tenure at Arthur, my repeated criticism of Trent’s ineffectual student union is not simply for criticism’s sake. Rather, it has long been my belief that as a union representing the interests, needs, and will of the undergraduate student population, it is the TCSA’s mandate to use their considerable power and resources to effect material change to that end. Now, however, I fear I might not have been harsh enough, the message having yet to fully sink in.

It is hardly surprising that members of the TCSA Board of Directors have not taken kindly to my repeated harsh (though in my opinion, fair) criticisms of them. It’s been expressed to me through several channels that Arthur’s recent editorial attitude towards the Association has been unfair, and antagonistic. A December Letter to the Editor penned by a volunteer at the Bonfire Bash maintains that the event was not a protest, but merely a de-stressor event. Confusingly, the author states that “The Bash was never expected to convince administration to listen to students, or to even grab their attention. The organizers are well-aware how difficult it is to get through to the higher-ups of Trent,” in spite of the plethora of promotional paraphernalia insinuating exactly the opposite. While it is no great surprise to me that administrators would not take notice of an event of such diminutive magnitude, the TCSA’s public position seems rather a one-eighty-degree turn from their initial messaging.

This is a bit baffling given that, when asked on the night of the event proper, VP Anctil told Arthur in a recorded interview with journalists present that the TCSA had in fact “had one meeting with Lawrence Lam,” and that administration was “just kind of questioning what the trajectory of [Excaliburnt Out] was.” VP Anctil went on to say that Trent administration was “open to hearing a bit more, especially when [she] was putting things into perspective about the mental health crises that are happening and also how students are living.”

The charitable (or otherwise TCSA-sympathetic) among us can debate the relative fairness of Coordinating Editor Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay’s characterization of the pumpkin smashing proceedings as “game show antics” as being uncalled for and inaccurate, but when a volunteer publicly attests that the aim was never to attract the attention of administration because of how “difficult” that would be, well, certain questions arise. One would have to forgive Johnston-Lindsay considering the fact the promotional materials in the initial information email for the event in question unambiguously called for students to “join the protest.” The liberal use of the imperative tense paired with a signature of “in solidarity” in the  press release certainly feels pretentious of typical communications amongst labour organizers. Indeed, much of the information regarding the aforementioned CUPE labour actions was done through emails with just such signatures.

Presented with this information it seems there are only two potential conclusions to draw. Either one must take the TCSA’s conflicting assertions at face value and believe that, yes indeed, the event was never meant to be a rally, an occupation of space, to alert administration or to serve any form of protest therein. Conversely, in weighing the evidence and applying a modest degree of critical cynicism, one might easily conclude that everything first said about the campaign was in earnest, and only after its perceived failure was it decided to re-canonize the initiative as a mere de-stressor get-together.

If we assume the latter of the two to be true, it seems evident that Arthur’s line of questioning and criticism, both qualitative and quantitative in nature, has struck a nerve among the leadership of the Association. Why else would a campaign initially addressed to “Student Leaders and Change-Makers of Trent University,” be retroactively defanged when its bite proved weaker than its admittedly feeble bark? VP Anctil did, to her credit, later agree to an interview with Arthur staff present at the end of the Burnout Bonfire Bash proper, though I might invite readers to consider for a moment what kind of motivation the TCSA might have for not responding to our written requests for comment, despite them having been issued many months previous.

As it stands, the TCSA have yet to even tell their membership what the tangible ends of this initiative are, let alone articulate what they mean when they advocate for “de-corporatization.” To what does that refer? Simply reverting tuition to what it was prior to the 2021 international and out-of-province tuition hike? Undoing the damage of the austerity measures implemented since 2003? Reverting wholesale to the collegiate structure under which the university was originally conceived all the way back in 1964? Corporatization is an entropic disease which cannot be rolled back so easily. What then, would the TCSA have the university do to effect such change? Do they expect the administration to re-purchase the now-disparate buildings which at one point in time formed Peter Robinson College?

By any measure, the Burnout Bonfire Bash has either failed in its stated goals, or else settled for nothing in the face of overwhelming ambivalence from the Trent University administration. Neither can be said to be a compelling use of the TCSA’s considerable resources, nor can it be said to have made meaningfully progress in the quest to “de-corporatize” Trent University.

At the end of the day, “de-corporatization” without tangible goals is nothing but a catchphrase appealing to naïve ideals of rebellion and positing nothing in the way of material change. It is fundamentally conceited to think that what amounts to little more than a Canva-templated pizza party could possibly incentivize the university to do that — especially considering the TCSA’s own involvement in the very corporate ventures they profess to fight.

Part 2: Student Advocacy, Inc.

In the past several years the TCSA has increasingly partnered with a number of companies and corporate stakeholders, both campus-specific, and in the Peterborough community and beyond. These ventures run the gamut from accepting sponsorship deals with Chartwells to promote their “BOOST” mobile ordering app, or promoting services such as U-Ride and Skip the Dishes with collaborations and coupon codes, to forking over huge chunks of their operational budgets to third-parties such as the IM Well app, or Nimbus tutoring (to whom they paid $14,080.30 in the 2021/22 financial year), which offer support services for students on a private, for-profit model of operation. While VP Anctil’s Vol.57 Iss.0 op-ed does make the disclaimer that the $1500.00 in profits from their BOOST partnership, it nonetheless makes them complicit with Chartwells’ business model; it being hard, after all, to disavow a company your organization is actively taking money from.

Credit where it is marginally due, several of these posts bear Instagram’s “Paid Promotion” label, or else the ubiquitous “#ad”. That said, many of the (presumably) paid BOOST advertisements are not noted as such whatsoever. When mixed in with the rest of the TCSA’s social media feed without clear delineation, this sort of subliminal advertising poses potentially insidious repercussions to students who might be unable to distinguish between it and the TCSA announcements which are of actual concern to members and have some relation to advocacy on their behalf.

I plan to extend some love to Trent Food Services at some point with a much-deserved long-form piece of its own, though for now take my word that their pantry is not all milk and honey. It’s laughable for the TCSA to profess concern for the problem of systemic food insecurity among students while simultaneously taking money from Chartwells, who enforce a despicable food monopoly on campus which is itself responsible in large part of the food insecurity and malnutrition endemic to the modern university.

On the one hand, the TCSA wants to hold themselves up as a worthwhile and effective union, while all the while reaping the benefits of unreflexively making themselves the mouthpiece of corporations. Rather than directly employ, or even afford a platform for student tutors, the Association dumps tens of thousands of dollars into Nimbus — a company which still charges students for tutoring services despite the considerable TCSA subsidy. 

Likewise, the IM Well app, the Association’s response to the perceived lack of professional counselling and mental-health services is a weak substitute for actual counselling services, and belongs to a disturbing trend of commodifying essential mental healthcare resources. While TCSA Executives and Commissioners are quick to pile criticism on Trent Wellness and Student Health Services, they seem considerably more reluctant to examine the flaws of their proposed substitution. A recent Letter to the Editor describes the pains of navigating I.M. Well’s inept alternative to conventional counselling, painting a sad picture of the student union’s solution to the mental health crisis.

A common defense against criticism of such practices across all levels of the Not-for-profit Industrial Complex is that joyless aphorism that says “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.” Be that as it may, being beholden (as we all are) to the machinations of the free market is wholly different than willing collaboration therein.

In Chapter 2 of his quoted-to-the-point-of-cliché (though admittedly excellent) treatise Capitalist Realism, the late, great Mark Fisher claims that one of the structural functions of late capitalism is its ability to appropriate the aesthetics of anti-capitalism to codify its ideological monopoly. “So long as we believe (in our hearts) that Capitalism is bad,” writes Fisher, “we are free to continue to participate in Capitalist exchange.” I would argue that what we are currently seeing with the Trent Central Student Association is that in effect, if only in microcosm.

Since [the anti-capitalist movement] was unable to posit a coherent alternative political-economic model to capitalism, the suspicion was that the actual aim was not to replace capitalism but to mitigate its worst excesses; and, since the form of its activities tended to be the staging of protests rather than political organization, there was a sense that the anti-capitalism movement consisted of making a series of hysterical demands which it didn't expect to be met. (Capitalist Realism 14)

Fisher adds that protest instead serves as “a kind of carnivalesque background noise to capitalist realism,” any radical element having been sufficiently tempered to the comfortable degree of superficial dissent permissible within the hegemonic ideological framework under which we live. In this state of what he calls “capitalist realism,” he argues that “anti-capitalist protests share rather too much in common with hyper-corporate events like 2005’s Live 8,” being more about the aesthetics of subversiveness or anti-establishment than material action to that end. Herein one can draw a compelling contrast between student's handcuffing themselves to the President’s office in 2003 in protest of the sale of Peter Robinson College, and the pop-punk soundtracked pizza party of the Burnout Bonfire Bash.

Participation in a fundamentally profit-driven, corporate system will never affect anti-capitalist action. To put it simply: if the system is working as intended, you have no hope of changing it from the inside. So self-congratulatory are the TCSA’s claims of their own supposed “advocacy” in the face of their own inaction that it borders figuratively on autofellatio. While we can be certain that Pizza Pizza appreciated the business on the night of November 18th, it seems a dubious pretense to christen a frigid pizza party as anything more than that.

In many ways I find it disheartening to be so unrepentantly critical of what is, in my opinion, a much needed initiative. Much needed, at least, in what it portends to achieve rather than what the campaign has finally come to be. Event still, “Excaliburnt Out” is itself just one facet of the myriad issues plaguing the TCSA as a whole. Therefore, it serves more as a case study, as a point of entry into further criticism than the be all and the end all of my critical inquiry. 

The issues that students face today are not particularly new, nor even remarkable. Rather they are issues that are endemic to the neoliberal institution of the corporatized university. These problems have existed since well before the Excaliburnt Out campaign was first conceived, and in many ways they’ve not fundamentally changed. What has changed, however, is the TCSA administration, and along with it their response to these issues. 

The TCSA of today has failed to make one of its primary goals the reduction of tuition for international and out-of-province students. As a matter of fact, last year both of those charges increased. The TCSA of today has not pushed for alternative funding to universities and colleges. The TCSA of today has not been more active in their advocacy and lobbying efforts to ensure that all people have the opportunity to be a student without fear of an overburdened debt load.

Instead we are left with an Association who shamelessly sells space on their feed to corporations who further impoverish students, effectively auctioning off the attention of the demographic they (as a union) are supposed to serve. On top of this they promote their own bespoke merchandise at every opportunity in an effort to bolster their “brand identity,” a phrase which in itself makes me want to retch.

I mean, I’ve seen chunky-knit toques embroidered with the CUPE logo and the typical heinously-ugly oversized tees that get handed out at labour rallies, but merchandise? What kind of a fucking union has merchandise? I’m not even sure the TCSA has the explicit right to commercially use the Trent University branding or Excalibur marketing package — they are after all, not affiliated with administration — though it certainly seems a nebulous sort of grey area.

Intellectual Property debates notwithstanding, the TCSA’s blatant pandering towards their own self-interests only serves to rub handfuls of coarse road salt into the wound caused by the apathy that characterizes so much of what they do. At a Special Board Meeting held on October 21st (after the originally scheduled meeting on October 16th failed to reach quorum!) the TCSA Board approved a number of significant financial motions, including a 4.7% increase to the wages of all Association staff members retroactive to September 1st, 2022. Included in this motion was an increase to the President’s wages to $21 an hour and the then-Board Operations and Services Manager (a position subsequently renamed “General Manager”)’s wages to $55 an hour. 

The TCSA President is salaried for $36,015 annually (though the TCSA website terms it an “honorarium” rather than salaried pay), dozens of times what the average TWSP-covered position pays out across two semesters — though it’s not even as if that money is going to a current undergraduate student. Incumbent President Zoe Litow-Daye graduated alongside the class of 2022, meaning her salary — sourced in large part from levy fees paid out of student’s tuition — is going to someone who does not even belong to the group represented by the union she leads. While in isolation, Litow-Daye’s presidency might seem a simple outlier, when taken in the context of the TCSA’s operational and hiring practices, it begins to seem like just one of many such instances of employment which fails to reflect the best interests of its current membership.

The TCSA boasts a longstanding pattern of hiring its former executives for comfortably paid positions within the organization. General Manager Tracy Milne is a 2006 Trent graduate who has been working with the organization since 2004. As of the 2022-23 Staffing Report, presented at the January 22nd Board meeting of the TCSA, the General Manager’s recommended starting salary was between $68,091.88–$80,654.39. Former TCSA President Wendy Walker was hired almost immediately after her presidential term to fill the then recently vacated position of Association Resource Manager. According to the TCSA’s By-Laws, the position has a starting salary of between ​​$39,240.82–$41,475.32. The most recent example of this long standing series of coincidences comes from the hiring of the TCSA’s brand-spanking-new Services Manager position. The position boasts a suggested salary of between $44,772–$46,592. Both positions are for ~35 hours a week, and allow for twenty paid vacation days, ten paid sick days and 4% vacation pay on gross. By all accounts excellent employment terms for an otherwise entry-level post-graduate position.

Shortly before the publication of this piece, the TCSA announced another hiring decision that necessitated a re-drafting of this section, namely that the successful candidate for the position was none other than incumbent President Zoe Litow-Daye. In a hiring announcement obtained by Arthur, Wendy Walker cites Litow-Daye’s “significant experience in student support and services,” which, “combined with [her] institutional knowledge and passion, made her an exceptional candidate which [sic] could not be ignored.”

While Walker said the TCSA “would have ideally liked the Service Manager to begin in January,” as the initial job posting indicated, the hiring committee—which consisted of Walker, Milne, and VP Anctil—selected Litow-Daye nonetheless, saying “her new responsibilities could be managed until she is able to enter the position.” First and foremost this begs the question as to the actual necessity of the new position. Surely if the Service Manager’s responsibilities can be deferred an entire semester merely to hold the position for a current executive, it can’t be that necessary, can it?

Again, the case of the Service Manager position follows the same basic formula as established by Milne’s and Walker’s hiring. The fact that the committee responsible for hiring her comprised Walker, Milne, and VP Anctil only serves to further muddy the water. Litow-Daye has already worked within the Association for years now, and seems willing to toe the institutional line. Certainly this quality makes her an obvious candidate for a position within the organization, as opposed to somebody from the outside who might carry a different perspective.

For the record, I’m not outright insinuating nepotism, conflict of interest or any sort of nefarious impropriety. I am merely juxtaposing matters of public record. If it seems that the deliberate placement of these pieces of information one beside the other highlights some sort of pattern, or implies a certain correlation therein, that is entirely the determination of you, dear reader. Admittedly I am not the sole arbiter of truth or interpretation, though in certain cases the facts speak for themselves, as it were.

Even in cases where former execs fail to find employment within the ranks of the Association, there is a well-documented phenomenon of former TCSA staff being hired into Management positions within the university administration. One needn’t look further than the LinkedIn of many a TCSA alum to see an employment history that begins as a TCSA Commissioner, then a VP or even perhaps the President, to present employment in a department at Trent University. Perhaps it's for this reason that the scope of potential disruption effected by the TCSA remains small. After all, being arrested at a protest against Trent University administration might well hinder their executives’ ability to get hired by said administrative body upon their graduation.

One element of the initial Excaliburnt Out press release that puzzled myself and Sebastian upon first reading it was the inclusion of the assertion that the TCSA “stand[s] strong in solidarity with Trent’s faculty and staff.” At the October 18th TCSA Board meeting, during a discussion with a number of Trent University Faculty Association (TUFA) members, TCSA execs bombarded them with comments, questions and complaints that seemed rather more directed towards staff, than faculty (which comprises only teaching and professorial staff). This implied, to the Arthur staff in attendance, that the TCSA either was ignorant to, or simply did not care about the distinction between staff and faculty, who — while both employees of the university — often do considerably different jobs.

While the class interests of many Trent University employees doubtlessly coincide with those of many in the undergraduate student population, they by no means do so universally. Indeed, Leo Groarke, Glennice Burns, and many others who are directly responsible for many of the corporatization measures which the TCSA say they oppose are themselves Trent University staff. Are we to believe that “[standing] strong in solidarity with Trent’s faculty and staff,” extends to them? Could it be that the TCSA Executives, anxious to secure their own future spot among the ranks of Trent University’s staff have slipped in a moment of mauvaise fois, forgetting that they represent the interests of students first and foremost, rather than those of the organization they hope to one day employ them?

Non-binding insinuations aside, it’s plain to see for most people that the TCSA is not exactly what one might call “outwardly hostile” towards Trent University. Not that such a position is necessarily in their mandate, though one tends to assume that an organization largely representing undergraduate students might generally position itself in relative polarity to that administrative body which is primarily interested in vampirically leeching capital from them whilst affording them the barest necessities such that they don’t commit suicide. Certainly their predecessors were not afraid to take such a definitive stance.

Part 3: The Once and Future Union

“Students are the ones responsible for ensuring that the TCSA stays relevant and reflects the social, economic and political interest of the vast majority of students, while improving overall student life at Trent University” 

- Boykin Smith, candidate for VP Campaigns & Equity, 2014.

Active from 1974 to 1994, the Trent Student Union, or TSU, was the organization representative of the undergraduate student body at Trent University before the incorporation of the TCSA. One need only pour through the Arthur archive, the Trent Library and Archives’ records, or even microfilm of the Peterborough Examiner from the time they were operational to get a sense of the scope of their work at their peak. When notorious homophobe Anita Bryant (long may she rot in hell!) came to Peterborough in April of 1978, the TSU and the Trent Homophile Association (the Trent Queer Collective’s one-time hard-as-nails name) mustered a delegation numbering more than two-hundred to demonstrate outside the Memorial Centre.

Not in the entirety of my time at Trent can I think of a TCSA initiative as comparably successful. . 

Much of the matériel distributed by this late labour group makes use of unabashedly left-leaning symbology. Indeed, TSU posters sometimes depict the organization as a moustached effigy bearing resemblance to a certain Soviet leader, and an old Arthur front spread for TSU elections demands students choose between “Anarchy, Authoritarianism, or Apathy.” This sort of abrasive identity may not be an approach which sits well with everyone, especially given the cultural push towards diluted, liberal respectability politics as the standard of “progressivism.” Personally, I credit my forebears in the TSU, the Trent Homophile Association, and decades previous Volumes of Arthur who refused to conform to a standard of polite society so that today a transsexual girl fag of such infamy as myself can carry the torch of incendiary journalism with minimal fear of repercussion. To quote a previous interview subject of mine, “if any community… is gonna be accepted, they need to be accepted not by Western moral standards, but by what the community is at its best and worst.” I daresay the same applies to any group fighting for their own class interests. We cannot compromise our dignity on the basis of being polite.

In comparison to the TSU in its heyday, and even to other more radical student unions still around today, the TCSA seems far more submissive and willing to do as administration asks of them. The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t actually get anything done. Here again I’m reminded about a remark from my aforementioned interviewee about how not-for-profit organizations, whether they were started by “Maoists, Anarchists, whatever, the second they get NGO status start making these infographics that nobody wants to look at, and talking about who their Board of Directors is.” I’ll not go so far as to assume that anyone on the TCSA have ever been Maoists or Anarchists, but as for the accusations of disseminating infographics and endlessly congratulating their own executives… Well, if the shoe fits the student union, I might as well call them Cinderella.

If the TSU was so good, then you ask, why aren’t they still around today? Reader, I’m glad you asked.

While the union of the 70s and 80s may well have been a fixture of local organizing, no one, not even unions it seems, are immune to growing old and selfish. Between November 15th 1994 and November 29th 1994, Arthur chronicled the implosion of the longstanding student union due to reasons none other than nepotism, corruption, and conflict of interest. In a Letter to the Editor in Vol.29, Iss.9 titled “Conflict of Interest: Alive and Well at the TSU,” Naresh Raghubeer and Andrew McKeever outline the silhouette of a scandal involving then-TSU Chair Andrea Harrington and Internal Commissioner Damian Rogers awarding themselves an employment contract to compile the TSU TeleDirectory, a position which paid a staggering… $800.00.

In the subsequent issue, Arthur announced that on November 17th, 1994, Harrington had been impeached in a 10–3 vote by the TSU board during a five-hour committee meeting. Rogers, by contrast, escaped impeachment, with the board citing his extensive contribution to the student body as reason to continue in his position. An article by Carl Warren “TSU Executive Under Fire” in Iss.11 further details the simmering drama, with members of the Student Senate Caucus signing an open letter disparaging the union, “an organization they perceive to have little or no accountability to students”. The article argues a fundamental disengagement of the student body, citing TSU voter turnout numbers between 30–40%. In comparison to contemporary TCSA turnout, which fluctuates between scarcely 20% to at times less than 10%, those numbers seem downright fantastic.

It’s worth noting that TSU Executives were not salaried as the TCSA execs of today are. The TSU, at the time, also controlled a far more modest sum of student’s money than the TCSA does today. The scope of this particular scandal—in comparison to the stakes of the internal appointments and monetary allotments made with far less student oversight within the contemporary Association—is almost diminutive in its possible implications. Consider: if a student union can dissolve as a result of a mere $800, what are the implications for the multi-thousand dollar permanent positions the TCSA offers today? If an internal appointment for a meager contract position was in 1994 considered a blatant conflict of interests, what can be said of an Executive being hired by a panel of her colleagues today; wherein lies the difference?

And make no mistake, dissolve it did. The TSU would never truly recover from the scandal and subsequent impeachment of its Chair. Following widespread calls for accountability, the union was restructured into the Trent Central Student Government, a name it bore for a single year before becoming the Association we know and loathe to this day.

As such, I dare not hold up some idyllic image of the TSU as an example of unsullied perfection. No organization is without flaws, and I am generally the last person to suggest a return to the mythologized past. However, what we’re seeing in our present union is not progress, nor is it fundamentally different from what has come before. The status quo is not good enough. 

I’m by no means the first to claim our Association at-large are neoliberals with a capital ‘L’, far from it, though the confluence of my major and my own political literacy do prove particularly potent munitions with which to do so. To paraphrase Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace: when it comes time to throw bricks through that Starbucks window (LEGAL DISCLAIMER: NOT A THREAT!) will you leave me all alone? If we burn down the university (NOT A THREAT!!) will you just sit on the shelf inside?

The union movement is not borne of belief in the ballot, nor of belief in reform. Rather, collective action like this comes from an understanding that the only way to get what we need, want, and deserve is not to petition for it, but to seize it ourselves. Perhaps if the TCSA wants us to keep seeing them as a union, they should put some serious thought into acting like one.

For instance: the TCSA wants the credit for “advocating” for hybrid classes through Excaliburnt Out and other campaigns, despite having done nothing to actually champion that cause. Certainly, they say that they have done much to effect such change — on Instagram, in campaign speeches, and the like — though any seasoned leftist understands that theoria and praxis are grossly different undertakings. This claim I simply cannot abide seeing as they had the opportunity to do something, and squandered it.

In January of 2022, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic’s third wave and the subsequent proliferation of the omicron variant, Trent University made the categorically unpopular decision to institute a mandatory return to in-person classes during the second semester. I was responsible for documenting the ensuing backlash in a January 26th article (which incidentally came out immediately after a guest column by Trent President Leo Groarke in the Examiner which blithely dismissed students’ concerns). Feedback from students at the time demonstrated a strong desire for remote or hybrid learning options, citing concerns around accessibility and personal safety. The TCSA made no effort to support such a motion at the time, only posting a now-deleted response after the article specifically noted that at the “time of publication, the Trent Central Student Association… has not issued a statement about the return to school.” Damningly, perhaps, but unsurprising, the only post still on their Instagram feed from January 26th is a promotion for the IM Well app. 

That same week a small but determined group of students braved the weather to try and organize a rally against the mandated return-to-school on the Faryon bridge. The event was admittedly unsuccessful, both in its stated goals and the scope of its turnout, though it serves to highlight an example of a material action the TCSA could decide to take. “I would love a student strike but who’s gonna organize it?” one student asked at the time. My instinctual answer is that a student union, when faced with circumstances that disadvantage and potentially endanger their membership, have the onus to organize decisive action. An attendance strike — or even better, a tuition strike — remains the most powerful course of action a student body can take, and one the TCSA continually fails to endorse, seemingly for fear of angering administration. The time, however, has long since passed to take administration’s opinions into account.

Seeing as a student strike seems off the table under the current TCSA administration, one begins to wonder what their “advocacy” might look like going forward. With regards to the future of the Excaliburnt Out campaign, VP Anctil afforded a few insights the night of the Burnout Bonfire Bash. 

“We want to do a screening of that documentary, Whose University Is It?, and also pitching out through the Instagram and such the Arthur’s [sic] podcast Growing Pains,” she said, of future plans. “I think it should be everywhere. We’re currently developing a podcast to go into what’s going on provincially and nationally—and locally, of course—and then a documentary as well.” She also added that the TCSA are also “hoping to do a sort of gallery thing with students, so bringing in their work and their lived experience—but that’s in development right now.” This would go on to take the form of the TCSA’s current “Excalagala: Challenge the Way They Think” arts-based advocacy campaign.

All of these certainly seem well intentioned. Necessary, even. However, at a certain point events and campaigns to mitigate burnout are no longer enough. As a treatment of the symptom they may prove somewhat useful, but offer little in the way of preventative measures. None of the Excaliburnt Out campaign has targeted the root cause of said burnout, and without a decisive effort to do so it will simply continue to spread like a rot throughout the institution. 

Much ink has been spilled by this point documenting the shortcomings and misguided antics of the TCSA. Since we at Arthur are not interested solely in criticism, but also in a mandate of solutions-based journalism, permit us to make a few more concrete suggestions. Members of the TCSA Executive and Board could mobilize their collective political and material power to numerous and potentially productive ends. They could, for instance, attend Trent Board of Governors meetings, habitually attend Levy Council Meetings, meaningfully ally themselves with other student groups and unions on campus including the Trent Graduate Students’ Association, Trent Durham Student Association, TUFA, CUPE, and OPSEU among many, many other things. The President could fulfill her job description and regularly attend city council meetings, ensuring the student voice is represented consistently and not just when the Association wants a photo-op.

The Association made its first appearance as a delegation at city council in ages on December 12th, where VP Anctil and VP University & College Affairs Shay Surujnarain pestered councillors to not change the transit plan back to a hub-and-spoke model in 2023. They deemed it unnecessary, however, to stay and bear witness as a group of five councillors callously voted against a motion to allocate $100,000 to homelessness support efforts. They were absent throughout proceedings for the 2023 budget approval process, including when council decided by a 9-2 margin to freeze transit funding for 2023, and have yet to be seen since.

It is probably in the best interests of an organization representing the students of Trent University to be as outwardly transparent to those students as possible. While, to their credit, the TCSA does make all of their meetings open to the public, their record of posting minutes of these meetings is haphazard at best, and those minutes sometimes leave much to be desired. Given staff of the TCSA are, by extension, employees of the undergraduate student body themselves, should there not be more oversight or at least transparency as to the process underlying these decisions? As it stands the TCSA just giddily announces (in those cases where Arthur fails to intercept the news) the transition of their existing staff into more senior roles, leaving us as students to question by what parameters that decision was made.

How little could we have imagined the union meant to do away with the corruption that marred its predecessor would instead become an elitist clique presiding from on high. Who could have guessed the Association which claimed to lead in bold, new directions would instead sink into a rut of ineptitude and obsequiousness to the status quo. So low sits the bar for action that one could dig six feet down and still comfortably step over it.

The revolution will not be petitioned, graphic-designed, or Instagrammed. As long as those remain the primary strategies the TCSA employs, the material circumstances of undergraduate students shall only continue to erode in the face of further encroachment from a self-interested university administration and Board of Governors that repeatedly prioritise the profit margin over the needs of undergraduate students.

Still, despite all my rage these remain but words on a page.

Having covered the TCSA — and simply existed in the Trent community — for years now, I am exhausted with this atrophy without end in sight. I continue to write simply because in the absence of any concrete action from the Starbucks-bearing glass palace on high, my pen proves mightier than the “Excalibur” sword. If the Association insists on painting themselves as some would-be Knights of the Round Table in this fairy tale, they can hardly act surprised when they have to contend with their own Morgan le Fays. 

Should any TCSA executives have read this far and are taking my complaints personally, I beg of you to sit with that feeling. You are the people paid to represent us, and you have up until now failed to do so. The TCSA is every undergraduate student of every background at this university, united in our common interests and defined first and foremost by our status as students. As attendees of a university which sees us as rows on a ledger, and as members of a union which is supposed to be doing something to change that. Let your reaction to this article be testimony to your intentions. With that, I turn to you the TCSA and ask:

 “What are you going to do about it?”