Rightwing politics grow on campus
by Nick Smith
The events of September 11, 2001 put a chill on progressive movements that had grown with the peak of the global justice movement in North America. This chill resulted in an initial downturn of mass protest and a widespread call to cancel actions on the street out of “respect for the victims”. These developments created a window of opportunity for organized right-wing politics on university campuses. Conservatives, for instance, used the moralistic mobilization for the “war on terror” to dismiss student protest and lobbying efforts as confrontational, ineffective and terrorist-like.
But ironically, many conservatives who are often the most vocal in their dismissal of student activism are the very ones who pretend to engage in it: they are conservatives infiltrating positions in student unions. Campus conservatives have learned to exploit divisive “wedge” issues to consolidate enough bloc constituency votes to occasionally deliver electoral victories. With average voter turnouts in student union elections ranging from 8 to 15%, such blocs can play decisive roles. However, there is another common aspect to their strategy: campus conservatives who actually win campus elections almost universally do so by deceiving students by appropriating progressive language to cloak their neo-conservative political agenda.
This phenomenon is not only the result of the opening provided by the “war on terror”. There is something else driving the young conservatives’ infiltration of student unions across Ontario. Many months before September 11, 2001, a centrally organized campaign was launched by the Ontario “Progressive” Conservative Party (PC) to take control of student unions and cultivate a new generation of “leaders” to carry forward the conservative agenda. Indeed, the most insidious development bolstering backdoor conservative machinations within certain Ontario student unions is the commitment, within the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, of infrastructure and resources devoted specifically to providing finances and political consultation to conservative candidates running in elections on a number of key university campuses.
Secret Fund
With the help of the PC Party, since 2000 the Ontario Conservative Campus Association (OCCA) has been running the “Millennium Leadership Fund”, which is expressly dedicated to supporting conservative efforts to “Take back student unions”. Although this “secret” fund has been quietly servicing election candidates for over four years, it is unknown how much money is filling its coffers. The OCCA, as an external campus organization, is not required to publicly list its donors or recipients. Most importantly, the OCCA’s operation is sometimes in clear violation of students’ union election regulations. At present, the University of Western Ontario Students’ Council is possibly the only students’ union with regulations explicitly banning external donations in student elections. And yet, this is also a campus that has seen some of the most active Conservative organising.
The OCCA leadership feels no need to apologise for their campaign to hijack student unions, but they do feel the need to stay undercover so as not to jeopardize the success of their candidates. Former president of the Ontario PC Youth Association, Dave Forestell, stated in a 2002 interview with the Western Gazette that there is no reason to inform student voters of his party’s interference in campus elections: “Candidates make decisions based on what will get them elected. Why would they freely offer information that would identify something negative in their campaign?”
These manipulative tactics have had limited success, duping student voters at the Universities of Toronto, York, Ryerson, Waterloo, Western, Wilfred Laurier, Lakehead, Windsor and Guelph. And the list continues to grow. One can only assume that it is not only financial support delivering these results; but also the mentorship from senior party brass, ‘ringers’ and organisers who coach their candidates to massage their message to win votes by avoiding political hot button issues.
Indeed, conservative candidates on several campuses have actively attempted to undermine the work of student advocacy by suggesting that student unions are plagued by divisive politics. In a number of cases, candidates have campaigned on a platform of “removing politics from their students’ union” (as if this were possible!). In the current context of privatization, increased fees and chronic under-funding, the strategy of the Right has been to use the politics of division to distract students from important issues and from the devastating policy being implemented by the government. The reality is that the candidates sponsored by the Millennium Fund have clear marching orders and a hidden agenda that comes into view only after they are elected.
Progress Not Politics
At the University of Waterloo, in 2004, the OCCA held its convention and its outgoing vice president, Ryan O’Connor – who was later hired by the York Federation of Students’ “Progress Not Politics” slate as a Policy Analyst – provided telling words to Conservative candidates seeking Millennium Fund support: “Member campuses must be assisted in their efforts to fight for conservative sensibilities during election and referendum campaigns at their schools. We need to be working together to find the best ways to promote our Conservative message at universities to offset the union-washed rhetoric students have suffered through during their high school careers. This year, campuses will be able to look to OCCA for assistance and support in organizing, messaging and campaigning at home.” Further comments from O’Connor shed light on the role that Conservative youth are playing within the broader arena: “There may be times when the constant squawking of the special interest groups in Ontario begin to strain our Party, and lead them away from the Conservative principles we stand for. If that happens, we will be there to drown out those self-interested, shrieking harpies and ensure that sanity reigns”.
The message that elected conservative leaders are bringing to campuses is one that sounds alarmingly similar to hard-Right Bush rhetoric. Nowhere is this agenda made more arrogantly explicit than in the election platform of Queen’s student and current president of the OCCA, Kasra Najatian. Najatian’s rattling rally cry (which can be found at www.rightwing.ca/users/teamkasra) calls for a “shock and awe” campaign and calls upon Conservative students to take back student unions by building a “coalition of the willing . . . a team [comprised] of libertarians to pro-lifers, free-market capitalists to pro-Israel advocates”. What is interesting about this is the very conscious strategy of moving beyond Conservative Party members to reach other socially conservative groups to consolidate resources and broaden the sphere of influence.
Alarming
The lines of affiliation between some Conservative student union leaders are alarming. For example, shortly after being appointed to office by the York University central administration, despite being investigated for electoral fraud, the former York Federation of Students’ (YFS) Executive hired other campus conservative ringers to fill key staff positions in the students’ union. The first thing these newly installed politicos did was to cancel the next regularly scheduled elections to keep themselves in office. They also eliminated the Vice-President of Equality position and cut funding for the black, aboriginal and queer student services. Then, while other student unions were using the summer’s federal election as an opportunity to raise concerns over education funding and extract campaign commitments to tuition fee reductions, the YFS executive joined other Conservative student leaders to campaign for the Conservative Party of Canada and for increasing the student debt. They also funded a delegation to attend the Conservative Party leadership convention to endorse Stephen Harper’s campaign bid. In addition to this, they teamed up with Conservative students from University of Toronto, Queen’s and several other schools to organize the Toronto pro-war rally on the anniversary of the war in Iraq. But the trail of influence is most clearly evidenced by the fact that the owner of the domain name for York’s conservative election slate, Progress Not Politics, is OCCA President Najatian, a Queen’s student.
The 2004-05 Ryerson student union president, Dave MacLean, also a Conservative member and recent appointee to the OCCA executive, supported the establishment of an anti-choice student group and later voted to allocate student union funds to it. Despite having promised, during his campaign, to work with students across the country through the Canadian Federation of Students, MacLean’s big project was to unilaterally and undemocratically pull Ryerson out of the CFS. That effort was put to rest when his own membership quashed his agenda at a general membership meeting where the rank-and-file voted to over-rule the council’s actions. Another one of MacLean’s campaign deceptions included alleged support for the tuition fee freeze. This promise was contradicted when MacLean immediately joined the university president to criticize the freeze and support ancillary fee increases. Back-room politicking reigned this year at Ryerson, where MacLean’s “more friendly approach to lobbying” translated into wine-and-cheese parties with the university administration.
But while the Canadian incarnation of the conservative electoral machine has, so far, been limited to Ontario, these campus conservatives are clearly taking cues from south of the border. In fact, the American-based US Campus Leadership Program, a website featuring resources and a section on “How to Win Student Government Elections,” indicates a sophisticated level of organising that allows for free cross-border Conservative exchanges. The US Campus Leadership Program trains field representatives to go to college campuses to identify, recruit and coach student leaders to promote conservative principles more effectively.
But the real question we are facing today is: Why now?
Well, the Left in general has been very effective in not only winning victories, but in being able to make progressive ideas part of public consciousness. In Ontario, winning a tuition fee freeze represented a major victory against privatisation. This victory was the result of consciousness-raising, and it made it impossible for the right-leaning McGuinty Liberals to ignore voter demands. However, as our collectively-won successes grow, so will opposition to them. This means that on our campuses, students are charged with battling the ideology of the Right not only in the streets, but even within our own students’ unions. We need a wide call for activists and progressives to bring these unions back to their roots in integrated, progressive activism. Historically, students unions have provided infrastructure and resources in support of the mobilization for real progressive change. Such vehicles for change are essential for sustaining a movement that will pry open the Ivory tower and challenge oppression. The real task for campus progressives is to pick up not only the megaphone, but also a nomination form as part of the struggle to build and maintain a fighting student movement.
Nick Smith is a student activist in Toronto.
