A few weeks ago, some students protested something outside of Sid Smith. They had a megaphone, and they had some chants.
I think it had to do with reducing tuition fees or something.
Forgive my hazy recollection of the event. Even if I hadn’t been in class when it happened, I doubt I would have stopped and joined the protest.
This is not to say that reducing tuition fees is not a good thing. I like paying less money for things. Nor am I saying that students (and everyone else) who feel they are victims of injustice should not fight for what they justifiably feel is right. You gotta fight for your right (including, but not exclusive to, the right to party).
My major complaint regarding this whole event-a better word would be “debacle”-is that these fighters stepped into the ring backwards.
Their first mistake was the megaphone. If there is one thing I’ve learned in my years, it’s that megaphones piss people off. As soon as someone busts one out, people will get irritated. Imagine you’re walking down a street, let’s say St. George Street, and you have a lot on your mind. Suddenly, some jackass starts screaming some indecipherable gibberish out of a flared blow dryer with a cone at the end. You want that person to die.
Not to say that this method of attention-seeking is always unsuccessful. If you have a fresh message to convey that everyone needs to hear, be as mega as the phone you are holding in front of your freedom-fighting mouth.
Unfortunately, the message trotted out at these protests is uninspired, redundant, and downright childish.
“What do we want?” “Lower tuition fees!” “When do we want them?” “Now!”
Why did these activists feel they had to conform to this method of protest, which reached its peak effectiveness in the 1960s? Haven’t our methods of standing up for justice evolved and matured since then?
Now I’m sure the organizers of the protest had good intentions. And it’s true that people commonly associate chanting of this nature with fighting for a worthy cause. However, the fee protest organizers should have realized that this dated method is more annoying than effective.
An uninspired method of protest directly gives off the impression of an uninspired protest. I’m reminded of another recent debacle that hearkened back to the days of flower children: CanStage’s production of Hair. The tagline for the show was, “Now more than ever,” suggesting that the show had an essential message for the present day.
Instead, it was irrelevant, annoying, and lazily put together.
The first step towards making a difference tomorrow is discarding the ways of yesterday today.
