politics: Harry Bloy burns SFSS prez
B. Ramin and J.Johnston, The Peak

SFSS President Britta Jensen is expressing confusion and outrage following recent statements made by Liberal MLA Harry Bloy.

Bloy, whose Burquitlam riding includes SFU, earned the ire of the SFSS by suggesting that students at SFU favour a tuition increase, and implying that Jensen was a source of information leading to this conclusion.

"I have Simon Fraser in my riding, and when I speak to the students at [SFU] and I've spoken to [SFFS President] Britta [Jensen] up there, there's a lot of concern about the tuition freeze in that it's now taking five or six years to complete a degree," stated Bloy at a Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. "There are a number of students up there that would say: 'Increase the tuition. You know, it's hurting us.'"

Jensen, who supports the tuition freeze, resents this suggestion to the contrary, "He totally implicated me, and I think it was wrong," she said. "Why would he use my name? - I don't know what he was thinking."

Bloy, however, defends his statement, "Summer McFadyen [the Chair of the Canadian Federation of Students] brought up the quote at a future meeting," he said. "I looked up the quote the next day and the quote was right. Britta wasn't part of that sentence."

Semantics aside, the SFSS feels that Bloy's comments misrepresented the sentiments of students in general toward the freeze, as well as Jensen's position. Jensen says that a majority of students at SFU support the tuition freeze and do not believe it is "hurting" them. And she argues that it would have been more appropriate for Bloy to cite what the majority feel, rather than individual students who do want to see tuition raised.

Bloy's original statement followed a time in which the SFSS was in the process of building a working relationship with Bloy. Michael Mathews, SFSS graduate issues officer, recounts the interaction between the society and new MLA, "After the election, [Bloy] said he really believed in the tax cuts and we told him what we stood for and we found some common ground. We all laid our cards on the table, and then right away he goes and breaks our trust."

Incidentally, the statistics used by the Liberal government and widely cited in the media, that have been used to promote the argument that quality of education has suffered with the tuition freeze, causing students to require extra time to complete degrees, is based on information generated between 1988 - 1993 - before the tuition freeze was implemented.

According to CFS B.C. chairperson Summer McFadyen, statistics covering the actual tuition fee freeze period indicate that there has been no significant change in degree completion time. The only university to show a difference is SFU, whose students, on average have taken slightly less time to complete their degrees since the implementation of the freeze.

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