Mea culpa

See, now I have to apologize to student politicians. This sucks.

For months I have mocked student politicians, activitists, lobbyists, what have you, because they were in the middle of lobbying the provincial government to not increase tuition fees in next week's budget.

"You're fucked," I told them, and predicted if they were lucky they would only get nailed with a 10% increase. And I really did think that was the minimum they would get away with. It was rumoured that MUN wanted something like a 17% increase.

Because, and this was the way my logic went, Williams had already broken his promise to unions about not laying anyone off. The excuse was, "We made that promise before we knew how bad the books were. Because of how badly the previous government managed things, we have to go back on that commitment."

So yes, Williams promised a tuition freeze for the length of his first term in office, but I thought it was toast. He'd just dump the same excuse on them that he did with the unions. CFS had a decent strategy of saying to Williams that "You held the prime minister accountable when he made a promise - we're doing the same thing to you and the promise you made."

I never thought it would work.

It worked.

Fuck me.

No tuition increase, barring major economic collapse, until 2008 (The next provincial election is October 2007, that means an increase can't be announced any earlier than the March 2008 budget.) And it's across the board, which means MUN and CONA students are safe. Hell, med school, engineering and business students are safe as well. The one thing I didn't think to task is if international students are safe as well.

So, you know, mea culpa. Williams backed down and gave you your freeze. So does this mean student politicians are more effective and organized then when I went to MUN?

Nahhhh....