KPU Students Need to Stand Together to Push for Institution-Wide Change

Throughout its history, KPU has had its share of controversial issues. These include abusive staff members, ever-increasing international tuition rates, and planning partnerships with environmentally harmful organizations.

With such a diverse student body, it’s sad to see that when students are not happy with how they are being treated, they don’t have a space to fully explain their complaints, join themselves together in strength, and push back so that problem does not arise again.

As with any institution, the power of the student body at KPU is in its numbers. That is why, if students at KPU are stuck in a constant loop of controversies going unaddressed, it should be the duty of every KPU student to stand together until the issue is fully resolved and policies are put in place to prevent it from occurring again.

It should be the right of every student to complain, and be heard when they complain, and their complaints should not be cast aside until change is made.

The consistent scandals that dog KPU stem from the reality that a small group of people cannot create equality for everyone. For example, during every one of my semesters at the Surrey KPU campus, I have met at least one person who has filed a complaint against an instructor due to them making an inappropriate racial comment. Every time this happens, the student faces trauma that they now have to deal with even after filing the complaint. However, it is still seen as a single complaint when there could be hundreds of students facing the same problem.

Taking one complaint at a time and not making any systemic changes is why the same issues arise in KPU over and over again. If the university refuses to implement meaningful change after a problem has risen, and if the school paper reports on that problem, it is only being condemned, not resolved. Similarly, one group may have its very specific issue fixed while others have similar problems. If we work together to advocate for our shared concerns, more effective and profound solutions could be made.

The students of KPU are very capable of making large-scale collective change because, to put it quite simply, KPU students are a huge collective. As individuals who are part of this community, we make change in the world every day. Activists and artists at KPU, such as creative writing student Tawahum Bige, have led and stood for change, for example.

If all of us were to stand together in strength, it would be very difficult for the university to ignore the needs and wants of the KPU student body.