Even as a major snowstorm battered southern Ontario and the mercury plunged well below freezing, a group of international students from India continued to camp outdoors in downtown Brampton Friday night, to protesting their university after receiving failing grades on their course exams.
This comes after the institute – Algoma University – said it would give the 32 students who failed the course, even after a reassessment, another chance: a make-up exam that would be graded by a different teacher than the one who had initially evaluated them. However, the students, who have been here for 11 days, insist that the university did not contact them directly and respond to the main request, which is to prove that they indeed deserved these poor scores in first place.
The students said their protest was not pressure to overturn the results, as many claim on social media, but to whitewash their reputation.
Many protesters alleged racial bias in the incident, even though the vast majority of those who took the course and passed it were also international students from India.
The incident is a major public relations disaster for Algoma, whose revenue relies heavily on Indian students. The university has three campuses in Ontario: in Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins and Brampton. The Brampton campus is its cash cow. Now that videos of students raising anti-establishment slogans are going viral on social media, it will take some effort in Algoma to repair the damage. It must also make it easier for other higher education establishments, which depend on the same revenue model for foreign students. Their students can expect more flexible grading in the future, as institutions will likely work to protect their results.
Another “desi” protest in Brampton
Speaking of concrete results, there’s another protest underway in Brampton where (mostly desi) homeowners are rising up to protect theirs. Their revenue model also depends on co-opting as many international students into their basements as possible. Legally, no more than four unrelated people can live in a house. In Brampton, it is not uncommon to find 20 students living together under one roof. Now the City of Brampton, wary of the risks posed by overcrowding, including fire hazards, is launching a pilot project that would require landlords to obtain a $300-a-year permit if they want to have tenants . At a time when mortgage rates are high, homeowners are reluctant to pay more. And they received support from an unlikely community, the very one the City wants to help: tenants. They say landlords will simply pass the costs on to them. “You saw what happened when mortgage rates went up: if their payment went up $300, they raised the rent by $600,” said one tenant, a former international student. “This is going to come down on us. We’re going to have to pay in the end.
(Daksh Panwar is a journalist and broadcaster based in Ontario. Twitter: @Daksh280)
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