O’Neill takes the heat

Samantha Durnford, News Editor

Tim O’Neill finally faced the fire. In a discussion with students last week, O’Neill explained the recommendations in his report about post-secondary education in the province.

Students asked him questions, made statements, argued with him, walked out, and one even demanded an apology.

“I do think you owe students an apology for saying they wouldn’t be interested in policy,” said David Etherington, the Board of Governors representative for the King’s Students’ Union. “For suggesting we don’t have alternatives for the way post-secondary education is run,” he said. “I can assure you sir, that my constituents have many opinions. Please, come speak to students, come talk to us. We’ll give you our two cents.”

In a one on one interview after the event, O’Neill says he expected to be confronted.

“I wasn’t remotely surprised with what happened tonight. If I were in the students position, as I once was, I would probably be passionately advocating for lowering tuition fees. I understand that,” said O’Neill.

However, he is not sympathetic to students’ views.

“My job, my mandate, was not to sympathize with students or empathize with taxpayers,” he said. “It was to say: what does the evidence suggest should be done with tuition fees’ policy, and what would be the consequences if you change the policy.”

The two and a half hour discussion was more of a chance for students to say what’s on their mind to O’Neill, however, no changes will be made to his report.

One student asked, “Is this a way for you to hear students and revise your report or is this just a show so we feel we’ve had our say?”

“You’ve had ample opportunity to have your views known,” O’Neill replied. “I’ve looked at the evidence and looked at reports and had ample opportunity to see your viewpoints but you and I and the students here differ on the conclusions I’ve came to but there is no logic suggesting I need to change my report.”

Students in the crowd were visibly upset when O’Neill made a statement that students were more interested in tuition fees than the restructuring of universities.

“I didn’t think I was being arrogant in suggesting that students would be most interested in the tuition fee issue, but I certainly didn’t mean to insult anybody by suggesting that students wouldn’t have a wider range of interest than just tuition fees,” said O’Neill.

Overall, O’Neill left the McCain auditorium in one piece.

“I can’t say it was the most fun of my life,” he said. “But, it was far from being the most difficult.”