Content warning: Discussion of anxiety, depression, and suicide.

By Daniel Tarade

On college and university campuses across the country, students face a mounting mental health crisis. This is no secret, not to the administration and certainly not to students. In fact, I first heard of the troubling statistics collected by the 2016 National College Health Assessment survey when referenced by University of Toronto President Meric Gertler in a campus-wide email distributed following the third student death by suicide on-campus during the 2018-2019 school year.

In finally addressing the crisis, Meric Gertler highlighted that;

•  46 per cent of Ontario post-secondary students reported feeling so depressed in the previous year that it was difficult to function

• 65 per cent reported experiencing overwhelming anxiety in the previous year

• 2.2 per cent reported a suicide attempt within the previous year

With numbers this alarming, and only getting worse, you would think that our school president would enact serious changes. Nope. The administration struck a new committee and pledged to lobby the provincial government for more resources. Despite an endowment fund of over $2 billion, U of T committed no financial resources to ensuring timely access to mental health care, and ignored even the most basic demands, like the installation of barriers at the site of two suicides on campus. When a third student died of suicide at the same site less than six months later, the hands of University of Toronto administration became stained with blood.

In light of bureaucratic shiftiness and deflection and neglect, the citation of such grave statistics on the mental health crisis by top administrators appeared an attempt at normalizing the crisis. That students everywhere struggle. That mental illness emanates entirely from one’s own neurochemistry and genes. That the structure and hierarchy entrenched on campuses has nothing to do with the increasing rates of mental anguish and suicide.

Fucking bullshit.  

So let’s explore the systems and structures that brought about the mental health crisis. Only by viewing the flux of material conditions over time do we appreciate the battle lines. Only when armed with a historical view can students walk the path to equitable and democratic schools.

In the early 1990s, Canada and other western countries entered a recession. With mounting debt, the capitalist class shouted ‘balance the budget.’ And who paid down the debt? Not the capitalist class. No, the burden fell squarely on the shoulders of the working class, who suffered a massive austerity agenda under a federal Liberal majority government and a provincial Conservative majority government. In this environment, right-wing demagogue and Premier of Ontario Mike Harris slashed funding for postsecondary schools.

As per The Walrus, “Ontario postsecondary funding … fell by 21 percent during the ’90s while enrolment increased by 8 percent.” At the the same time, tuition fees spiked. In particular, the tories deregulated tuition fees for graduate and professional programs, which inflated by over 500% in some instances. Despite increasing tuition costs, there was no compensatory increase in Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) loans and new restrictions actually led to a decrease in the number of students receiving financial support.

If the Mike Harris strategy sounds familiar, you are not alone. For many, Premier Doug Ford signalled an unwelcome déjà vu. The Ford government cut both the number of OSAP grants and the six-month interest-free grace period for OSAP loans. Free tuition for poor students? Scrapped. And tightening the thumb screws, Ford outlawed mandatory student fees for essential services with his Student Choice Initiative (SCI). Much like “Right to Work” legislation, which undermines union solidarity, the SCI erodes the capacity for student organizing. In a victory for the student movement, however, the Canadian Federation of Students launched a successful legal challenge that overturned this anti-student law.

And don’t assume that the provincial Liberal party is a friend of students. The education budget never recovered after the Mike Harris government, despite the Liberals being in power between 2003 and 2018. Neither capitalist party values students or education intrinsically but only as commodities.

When public institutions are chronically-underfunded, administrators begin running schools and healthcare like a business. After all, the goal of education cuts is a manufactured crisis in the public postsecondary system that paves the road for privatization and further capitalist exploitation. And this is not some outrageous conspiratorial hollering. In 1995, Minister of Education and Training John Snobelen was recorded saying, “Yeah, we need to invent a crisis… Creating a useful crisis is what part of this will be about."

Under Harris, the Tories passed the Post-secondary Education Choice and Excellence Act, which achieved the first steps in this privatization agenda by allowing private colleges and universities to confer degrees. As we see with for-profit nursing homes, which suffered 78% more Covid-19 deaths than their non-profit counterparts, students and staff will suffer even more under the outright privatization of schools, all while shareholders leech profits.

And we continue to see the corporatization of our public schools before our eyes. Tuition fees and enrolment increases while funding for services stagnates or gets cut. Universities pay millions to those managing their investment portfolios and refuse to divest from fossil fuel companies. As Ford’s term continues, more and more college and university funding gets tied to the ‘performance’ and ‘outcome’ of students. As a result, Laurentian University already declared bankruptcy due to Ford’s austerity agenda.

With less and less government support, many universities and colleges attempt to account for budgetary shortfalls by targeting international students, whose tuition is not regulated. Between 2009 and 2017, the number of international students doubled in Canada. And tuition fees during this period increased twice as quickly for international students when compared to domestic students. In a BBC interview, U of T President Meric Gertler admitted that he increased tuition fees to boost U of T’s image and garner more interest from international students. Mel Broitman, a private recruiter who worked for the University of Windsor and other Canadian postsecondary institutions, says “international students are not being treated fairly but are being exploited for their money at the expense of their education.” The immigrant advocacy group Migrante Alberta uncovered that agents lied to eighty students enrolled at private college in Edmonton about their prospects of obtaining a work permit after graduating. No surprise that international students are speaking out and rejecting their “cash cow” status.

Unsurprisingly, the neo-liberal austerity agenda hurts students. It creates stress and provokes anxiety and depression. A third of students enrolled at universities and colleges in the Greater Hamilton and Toronto areas commute more than hour each way. In 2015, half of all students graduated from college or university with student debt, with only a third of indebted students paying off their loans within three years. Student debt now contributes to one in six bankruptcies in Ontario. Roughly four percent of postsecondary students living in Canada experience some kind of homelessness. More live in de facto slums or with abusive partners just to find some sort of shelter. And not all students suffer equally. Disabled students, queer students, racialized students, and international students face unique institutional barriers and violence that leaves them more vulnerable to deteriorating mental health.

These numbers and these experiences matter when attempting to understand the why of the mental health crisis. The administration instead chooses to play dumb whenever they peddle “student resiliency” or yoga as a solution. And administrators reveal their ghoulishness when they attempt to hide the harm they wrought. They embrace draconian strategies like the University Mandated Leave of Absence Policy (UMLAP). They lean on the campus police to respond to those in crisis, whose preferred strategy appears to be handcuffing students.

Legitimate and well-reasoned demands by students get ignored. Teachers and staff instead are abandoned on the front lines, entirely ill-equipped to deal with rampant mental illness, sexual assault, and poverty. Competition is baked into the institutional pedagogy, which remains focused on branding and image rather than helping students in their academic journey.

Where do students go from here?

Unlike many workers, students belong to unions. Unfortunately, student unions degenerate because of craven opportunism. And well-meaning activists elected to student unions get stalled out by the school bureaucracy while others lack the historical and material framework needed to identify where the battle must be fought. Major reforms will not be won in private boardroom meetings. They will only be won when students identify themselves as being in opposition to the administration and the puppeteering provincial government and take to the streets. Escalating and united actions, up to and including tuition strikes and mass walkouts are needed to raise consciousness among students and win demands. Students need to link up with the broader union and activist movements because our struggles are combined.

Building a revolutionary student movement presents a difficult but worthwhile challenge. With seasoned student activists graduating or dropping out every year, institutional memory represents a serious hurdle. And like the broader working class, consciousness of society’s class nature remains low. A revolutionary student organization needs to first connect student-specific struggles to broader struggles and emphasize the ultimate truth that capitalism needs to be dismantled and replaced by a democratic worker’s society before human emancipation can be achieved.

Students cannot only be for free tuition. They must also fight for the end of Israeli apartheid.

Students cannot only be for accessible counselling. They must also fight for Indigenous self-determination.

Students cannot only be for mandatory equity training for staff. They must also fight fascism, both on- and off-campus.

To this end, Socialist Action and independents recently founded Students Mobilizing Against Systemic Hardship (SMASH). Currently, only a handful of comrades belong to SMASH, primarily situated at the University of Toronto, but we aim to build this movement as a United Front. We invite any groups and individuals who study or work on campus that agree with the following demands to join SMASH and help build the revolution!

SMASH demands the following:

1. Free tuition for all students

2. Subsidized public transportation for all students

3. A living wage for all graduate students and all other students whose labour the university relies upon to function

4. A living wage for all University of Toronto Staff

5. Cops off campus

6. 24-hour counselling during midterms and exam season

7. Repeal the university-mandated leave of absence program

8. Mandatory sexual violence education and preventation presentation during orientation week; increase awareness about and access to resources about sexual violence

9. Establish culturally appropriate and representative counselling and mental health services on the U of T campus for addressing the mental, emotional, and psychological needs of racialized students

10. Establish mandatory equity training for all faculty, students, governors, and all other administrative bodies.

11.  Immediate divestment from any fossil fuel companies; Immediate divestment from any infrastructure projects that violate UNDRIP, like the Site C Dam and the Coastal Gaslink Pipeline

12. Boycott, divestment, and sanction of all corporations profiting from Israeli apartheid

13. Nothing About Us Without Us; That every committee or working group struck by the University to address student issues be comprised of at least 50%+1 student representatives

This list of demands is not exhaustive. No group of five or ten students can craft a perfect platform. But by connecting our collective struggles, we aim to grow and fight like hell!

Want to read more about the mental health crisis?

The Intersection of the Mental Health Crisis with Covid-19: "Injury on the tracks"

A Morbid Toronto Ritual - "Injury at Track Level"

Intervening in Suicide at a Societal Level; Lessons from Sri Lanka

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As per The Varsity:

Warning signs of suicide include:

• Talking about wanting to die

• Looking for a way to kill oneself

• Talking about feeling hopeless or having no purpose

• Talking about feeling trapped or being in unbearable pain

• Talking about being a burden to others

• Increasing use of alcohol or drugs

• Acting anxious, agitated, or recklessly

• Sleeping too little or too much

• Withdrawing or feeling isolated

• Showing rage or talking about seeking revenge

• Displaying extreme mood swings

The more of these signs a person shows, the greater the risk. If you suspect someone you know may be contemplating suicide, you should talk to them, according to the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention.