By Gabriel Hilty
Edited by Jessica Liu and Alloe Mak

Growing up, we are told that colleges and universities are the paths we should take. We strive for them in school to please our parents and teachers with Ivy League degrees, or comply so we are not looked at as the ones left behind.

Their innumerable flyers and websites all tell us that we are being given an opportunity. A once-in-a-lifetime chance to engage in ‘higher learning’ and the possibility to think critically—to solve the problems of tomorrow.

As a student, since October, it’s been clearer than ever that it’s all one big fucking lie. 

Dear university administrations in Toronto and beyond:

This one’s for you.

Our money and our debt are used to kill. Human lives are discarded with the weapons you fund, and our planet is trashed from the oil you drill.

When you don’t listen, don’t learn, and openly subvert your students, staff, and community, you are the problem. When you brutalize, demonize, and evict us from our space, you replicate what you choose to ignore.

As you besmear our intentions and twist our words, we see that purposely ignoring us isn’t enough: even more effort is needed for the colonial state to upkeep structures of hate.

Your talk of outside agitators is solely a distraction—a forced ignorance of the very people who are failed by the broken system that props you up. 

We see through your distortions, as do so many others, because our movement isn’t confined to arbitrary gates and property lines but brought together by those who suffer. This movement is a community of people in your city and the next, across land and oceans and rivers and seas.

Disclose and divest, because we will not stop and we will not rest.