Goodbye, WPIRG
Well, that's it. Reddit and the campus Conservatives combined to bring down WPIRG. The students of UW demonstrated that they care about $4.75 per term more than they care about having any oppositional voice to the administration or the Federation of Students. They should enjoy their $4.75 now, because it will be eaten up by increased FedS and UPass fees by the time they graduate.
According to the yahoos on Reddit, the results were:
- 7156 (82%) for removal
- 1570 (18%) to keep the fee
- 27% voter turnout
The students of Waterloo have demonstrated their character in this debacle. The corporatist, heavily subsidized narrative so prevalent at the institution has lost a counternarrative. (Do you think those copies of the National Post are given away for no reason? Do you think all those named buildings and programs come with no agenda? Do you think all those Velocity incubators have bootstrapped themselves?)
Don't give me nonsense about how your social enterprise is going to disrupt poverty. That is part of the corporatist narrative too. Maybe a few of you will transcend the idiocy of that narrative to actually work with the poor instead of patronizing them, but I am not holding my breath.
The chickens have also come home to roost for WPIRG. As I wrote before, they have done themselves no favours over the years. But there will not be a replacement organization to take WPIRG's place, and whatever good WPIRG could have done over the next few years is for naught. WPIRG did not do much good on a yearly basis, but it was relatively cheap to maintain and the accomplishments added up. By saving your $4.75 you have destroyed a pooled resource.
And let us not forget about the vendetta the Federation of Students has maintained against WPIRG over the years. Nobody is going to be organizing against mid-term FedS fee increases now.
Nobody will miss WPIRG. Few people were aware it even existed, until it took on issues they cared about. Nobody had the institutional memory to care one whit about the history of the organization, and nobody will even remember it existed in five years.
A pox on all your houses. I am disgusted with you all.