A message from your Students’ Association: Keep Calm and Write On

Market Modifiers are coming to MRU and your student executives are asking you to take up the fight for education at the price students deserve

As students of Mount Royal University, we need to be concerned with the current funding model for our institution. If you look at the history of MRU’s funding, it is a long list of unfulfilled promises from the provincial government. In 2009, when MRU became a university, the institution was promised a $13 million increase to its funding to cover the costs of implementing the third year of undergraduate degrees (funding which U of C, U of A, U of L and MacEwan all have), but that money never came. In 2013, MRU received a 7.3 per cent cut to its funding and this came after the promise in 2011 of 2 per cent increases over the next three years.

But why should we care? Currently, Mount Royal is facing a $16 million deficit. Every time funding is cut it means that students have to pay more for fewer programs and seats and for fewer support services. It is a diminished educational experience. This isn’t just about protecting our interests and our money but about preserving the university which has given so much to us as students. So what can we do? Write to the Minister of Innovation and Advanced Education!

Your SAMRU Executives are launching a letter writing campaign to send a message to the Alberta government to demand a thorough investigation into the current funding model for Alberta institutions. These inadequacies in funding for Mount Royal University should be addressed immediately.

You can sign a copy of the letter or write your own and submit it to us and we’ll mail it for you! Look for us in Wyckham House and on Mainstreet this October or e-mail VP External Seija at vpexternal@samru.ca or VP Student Life Zoe at vpstudentlife@samru.ca for more information.

— your SAMRU Representation Executives: Seija Roggeveen, Zoe Slusar, Erik Queenan, and Tristan Smyth