Ontario’s students are supporting their international peers in the fight against tuition fees.

As part of the #NeedOrGreed campaign the high prices paid by international students is being put in the spotlight as those taking part hope to see a more even playing field.

Student Associations (SA) across Ontario organized a peaceful protest Nov. 17 against the unfair tuition increase for international students. This stands in contrast to domestic students who have enjoyed a tuition freeze over the last couple of years.

Organized by The Ontario College Student Associations for International Tuition Equity Coalition, an action-oriented group to work towards addressing this inequity.

International students in Ontario, on average pay more than four times the amount in tuition compared to domestic students for the same education.

During the pandemic, domestic students received a 10 per cent tuition cut whereas fees were increased by eight per cent for international students.

Domestic students have also been granted tuition freezes for the past two years while international student fees have consistently increased.

Tima Shah, one of the #NeedOrGreed campaign’s two spokespeople and current president of Centennial College SA, spoke about how the student associations of different colleges came together to form a coalition to rally behind this cause.

However, organizing the protest was a significant challenge.

“Protests mean so many different things in different countries and are associated with consequences that students are genuinely really afraid of. It was difficult and scary, especially for international students, to participate in a protest and to trust that they will be safe and that they have a right to have their voices heard,” said Shah.

The purpose of the protest was to take an important first step to making voices heard and teaching students that freedom of expression is allowed.

The process of organizing took around three months.

All the participating SAs had pop-up booths with swag like flags, posters, and badges at their campuses to bring awareness to the protest and to get people interested in participating.

They also reached out to government stakeholders and people in power and alliances were made with local organizations.

Despite the response to the event, organizers know this is just the beginning.

“At this point, we knew that one protest is not going to make a difference, or not going to make the quality of the difference we want. And because of that, we already had that mentality that this is going to be the long game,” said Shah “Advocacy takes generations of student leaders to keep pushing and pushing for change. We know that this is the first step but not the last step.”

Students who want to get involved can sign the petition available on the website: https://needorgreed.ca/get-involved/.