The Association for Part-time Undergraduate Students is hosting Free Education Week, featuring nine free educational sessions all this week until Saturday.
The event is reminiscent of the Free U of T movement that provided upwards of 25 free courses per term during the TA strike of 1999-2000, an initiative that attempted to reach out to marginalized communities through free classes on human rights, psychiatry, and African studies. The former initiative targeted those who did not have the opportunity to pursue post-secondary education.
APUS VP internal Joeita Gupta claims that part-time students often have difficulty staying at U of T due to financial pressures, as OSAP and grant systems are accessible only to students taking a full-time course load.

Gupta pointed to other free education initiatives in Ireland, Germany, and Cuba as examples of an international movement APUS is trying to plug into with Free Education Week.

“We are not saying that by the fall of 2010 we should have zero tuition fees. Our goal is to prompt the university to think of ways to reduce tuition fees over the years so that eventually free education can become a reality,” she said.

On Thursday at 6 p.m. University of British Columbia professor and author of Five Ring Circus Christopher Shaw will talk about myths and realities of the Pan Am and Olympic Games in Canada.

“Primarily, I’m going to talk about what is happening in Vancouver,” said Shaw, who is also part of the Olympic Resistance Network. “There are a lot of things that happen here in terms of the oppression of the poor, environmental destruction, and the overall cost of the [2010] Olympic Games which are not known by most people, and there are a lot of things written by the Globe and Mail that makes it seem that everything is perfect out here when in reality it’s not.”

“We can spend six to ten billion dollars to cover the cost of holding Games in Vancouver and yet we claim that we have no money for education, and that’s nonsense,” he said.

U of T Scarborough is slated to spend $37.5 million on a $170-million athletic facility for the 2015 Pan Am Games, if Toronto wins a bid to host the games.
Shaw said he plans to discuss the social effects of the Olympic on communities in the broader context of what constitutes an egalitarian society to suit the week’s theme of free education.

On Tuesday at 6:30 former APUS president and employee Chris Ramsaroop, who took part in the Free U of T initiative, will discuss the plight of migrant workers in Canada.

“Every year in Ontario, we bring over 20,000 workers from the Caribbean and Mexico to small town Ontario […] to work the fields for six to eight months,” said Ramsaroop who has been working for the NGO Justice for Migrant Workers for nine years.

Ramsaroop says that during their stay, workers face abhorrent working conditions and cannot claim many of the basic rights of Canadian residents, including the right to unionize. Ramsaroop will link this issue to the broader changes that affect workers’ rights in Canada, as well as the current state of the economy, employment insurance, and immigration law.

A complete schedule of Free Education Week is available at http://www.FreeEducationWeek.blogspot.com/