p2pnet - rss feed: Ontario students sue colleges
p2pnet.net news:- Two Canadian students are using the power of the Net to help them fight the Ontario education authorities. They’ve started a $200 million class action against Ontario’s community colleges, using a new web site as their main communications tool.
Students in America, being sued blind by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), should take note. They’re getting no help from administrations, or from school legal departments, as the corporate music industry turns junior, mid-level and senior schools across the country into sales divisions, wielding the threat of expensive lawsuits students can’t hope to contest as motivation to buy corporate product.
A class action from a united body of angry customers might make the Big 4 sit up and pay attention.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Federation of Students has a launched StopUnfairFees.com to highlight the lawsuit.
Dan Roffey and Amanda Hassum say colleges have been “surreptitiously” charging for services that should’ve been included in tuition.
Roffey and Hassum also accuse the Ontario government of letting the schools get away with breaking the rules and doing nothing to stop it, but minister of training, colleges and universities, Chris Bentley, says ancillary fees have been around for decades and the government has always responded to complaints about improper charges. But he won’t comment on specific allegations until the case is settled, says StopUnfairFees.
A document released by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities in July 2006 informed colleges they shouldn’t be charging fees for information technology, laboratory or library services, or mandatory leases of laptop computers, says Whispering into the Mirror.
“Ontario’s college students have been paying illegal fees for years and the Ontario government turned a blind eye,” says Roffey, quoted in StopUnfairFees. “What kind of message does it send to students when we are told that we will fail if we cheat on an assignment, but at the same time we catch our college administrators cheating on our fees?”
And, “As a student who has struggled to make ends meet, I am angry that the government pretended to freeze tuition fees while allowing additional fees to be collected illegally,” says Hassum. Ontario premier Dalton McGinty, leader of the province’s Liberal Party,” broke his promise to students by claiming to lock the front door while leaving the back door wide open,” she states.
The two students, “representative plaintiffs,” are demanding compensation for every student who paid the illegal fees.
Colleges Ontario, an organization representing the province’s 24 colleges of applied arts and technology, said it’s passed the matter to its legal team and had no comment, .
If Roffey and Hassum win their suit, all college students who paid illegal fees would be eligible to receive some of the judgment.
Hassum and Roffey arepresent more than 150,000 college students in Ontario, says Whispering into the Mirror. Both, “complained independently to the Canadian Federation of Students.”
Roffey was, “heavily involved in his students’ union and knew what CFS could do for him, Amanda is the sister of University of Toronto president and incoming CFSer Jen Hassum. They were then introduced to one another and launched the suit.”
The CFS says it’ll play a supporting role, but won’t be involved financially, says the story adding, “Instead they will help where they can with background research and help with media events such as the one today.”
It also points out the class-action, “is also timed nicely as it won’t get rolling heavily until around August/September when the province is officially named in the suit. Then, on October 10, Ontario will go to the polls to elect a new provincial government smack in the middle of a class action lawsuit.”
The province of Ontario will also be folded into the class action because, “the colleges being named are legally considered its agents,” adds Whispering.
“”These fees mean students are forced into the workplace to make ends meet,” StopUnfairFees has Paddy Musson, chair of the union’s College Academic Division, declaring. “They have less time to study and they come to school tired.”
The same could be said of innocent US students, abandoned by their teaching institutions, who are trying to keep up their studies, at the same time being wrongly sued by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
being sued blind - Answer or else, RIAA tells universities, June 6, 2007
StopUnfairFees.com - Asking the Court for Help, , June 6, 2007
Whispering into the Mirror - A $200 million class action suit, June 6, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site
Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
June 7th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Ontario Students Rock!
June 8th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
I think students make easy targets.
They are preoccupied with their studies and developing lifetime relationships.
They have little time or money to fight battles, let alone time to figure out who is right on legal issues.
Good for these two.