S.10-145

MEMO

To:

Senate

From: Kyle Acierno, External Relations Officer, SFSS

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Date: October 14,2010

Re:

Academic Amnesty Motion - November 10,2010

The Province has not increased the base Full Time Equivalent funding grant for post-secondary

institutions and has consistently under-funded actual enrollment with the application

of this grant.

This

has resulted in an institutional reliance on increasing tuition fees and pursuit of private sector donations to

cover the costs

of providing post-secondary education at Canadian universities.

Not all students are able to afford the ever-increasing cost of tuition without negotiating a student loan in

order to pay for their education and support themselves while they study. Currently students in

BC have

the highest student loan debt in all

of Canada. The average indebted student will graduate with

outstanding repayable loans

of over $27,000.

The failure to provide adequate public funding does not only affect students. Professors will feel this

crunch as academic programs are cut, research money is re-directed, and competition increases for

funding awards.

For the past month, the Simon Fraser Student Society has been lobbying the provincial government for

more public post-secondary funding. The Minister

of Education and various Members of the Legislative

Assembly are sympathetic and even supportive

of our position, but they have all expressed the need for

students to come to together with a unified message.

In collaboration with the Graduate

Student Society, Teaching Support Staff Union, and other clubs on

campus, The Simon Fraser Student Society has been asking students to record their personal education

loan amounts on paper bricks that will

be used to build a Debt Wall on November 10

th

in

Convocation

Mall

at SFU Burnaby.

I am putting the following motion forward to ask the

Senate to enable students to attend this event on

November 10th by approving an academic amnesty for those who

will

not be attending their classes, labs

and tutorials for this reason. I

am not asking that amnesty be granted to students who have exams or

presentations in class that day, but for professors to levy no penalties against anyone who wishes to

attend.

Motion:

Acierno/

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Senate requests that faculty and instructors make every effort to accommodate students who wish to

participate

in

the November 10th rally and not penalize these students academically.