CREDIT: MELANIE ANDERSON
Fanshawe Student Union President Zack Dodge checks out the City Of London website to stay updated on current city events and to check out upcoming meeting listings.

London is facing a huge problem: it's a university/college town, but Western University and Fanshawe College students just aren't getting involved in local politics, and their voices aren't being heard.

“I think it's absolutely critical that (students) get involved (in municipal politics)” said Shawn Adamsson, organizer of Citizen Corps, a local initiative to get people involved in London politics. “It more comes down to how much effort one is willing to put out to engage an audience that's historically disengaged.”

Western University Students' Council President Adam Fearnall is in the process of changing Western's landscape of student involvement, but more than that, he is trying to reduce disconnect and pop the Western bubble between the students and the city.

“I think that any time we can make efforts to move outside of that bubble and really make a contribution outside of it and to bring people inside of our own bubble, I think that that's great.”

The USC has applied for delegation status to the Corporate Services Committee of London's City Council. “We're going to be making a presentation to the corporate services committee about some ideas that we have for ways that students can contribute to the discussion in the city,” said Fearnall.

The relationship Fanshawe's Student Union has with the city and city services is a good start. They “have a long standing relationship with a major community partner like the London Transit Commission, this is why the FSU is able to provide such an affordable public transit pass,” according to FSU President Zack Dodge.

He added that “the FSU is a voting member on the Town and Gown committee, which is a community- based sub-level of city council. This gives the FSU a direct line of communication to the Mayor and other major contributors to the municipal political scene.”

But attaining these relationships means getting out into the community and “participating in community events, having our students reach out to the community and create partnerships whenever or wherever we go,” said Dodge.

However, according to Adamsson, there is still a long way to go for post-secondary students to be directly involved with municipal decisions.

“Numbers show that when elections roll around, students just don't vote,” said Adamsson. “You can look back at the last municipal election, and the Ward councillor whose ward includes UWO didn't even campaign on campus at all. There was an advanced poll set up at Fanshawe last election and it had the lowest voter turnout of all the advanced polls around the city.”

The most riveting fact of all, though, as Adamsson pointed out is that “there are enough students in this town to completely shift the balance of power in the city. If Fanshawe and Western showed up in droves at the polls, two city wards would fall the way the students want them to fall ... It's that simple.”

Apparently not enough students have received the memo, but a group of students from King's University College, a school at Western, have taken matters into their own hands.

Disappointed with several infrastructural challenges in the city, such as a lack of bike lanes, they decided to speak up at the 2013 Budget Public Participation Meeting in mid-February.

“I think it really speaks well on behalf of King's, on behalf of Western, on behalf of post-secondary students, because we're seen as being not as informed and just not as mature, and I think we really dispelled that,” said Jasmine Pettie, a King's student.

Pettie said she was impressed that much of the comments from the public that came after theirs drew on the same points.

While Pettie and her classmates decided to reject the idea of not being listened to, there is still a concern among students that they are simply pushed to the side and disregarded. Fearnall dispelled that as a myth.

“I think that anytime you have an intelligent, well-researched voice in a room, you really have an opportunity to get people to listen.”

The King's students put forth a well-researched argument complete with relevant examples as to why bike lanes would be beneficial economically and environmentally.

Even Councillor Joni Baechler noted the success of wellresearched presentations at the meeting when she tweeted, “This Budget PPM is the best I have seen in my 12 yrs on council,” calling the presentations well researched, diverse and multi-faceted.

Pettie said municipal affairs and city decisions affect every student. “Every single program you're in has something that relates to council.” She suggested every program should include some form of involvement with city council.

She argued that the city is not revitalizing downtown enough and this sends an anti-student message.

“They really need students to stay and invest, and they have to listen to us and our concerns if they want that to happen.”

But building relationships with the city is going to take more than just attending a public participation meeting from both parties. Dodge said, “Building relationships is a two-way street. This takes cooperation and trust on both ends.”

“It requires a lot of patience from both sides when students want to get involved,” added Adamsson. “A lot of college and university students just don't have a lot of patience to put up with the nonsense ... I don't know how I have the patience to put up with the nonsense” and he's been out of college for 20 years.

“At the same time, a lot of the older folks my age and older don't have enough patience for the students to bring them up to speed and have them understand how everything works and why it works the way it does.”

Even Adamsson, who is very passionate and vocal about London's political scene, spends very little of his time dedicated to students.

He said it's not that they are not important, but they are tough to engage because “the city doesn't exactly welcome students with open arms in a lot of cases. Students are looked on with suspicion and, you know, whenever student housing goes up, neighbourhoods explode in fury, parties put off neighbours, so there's an element of the city not welcoming them very much.”

Adamsson also accounted much of the disengagement to the fact that students are so busy with school.

But, at the end of the day, the partnership between city council and student council “would be a recognition that the student governments in London are legitimate levels of government.”

Students have the power to influence change. There is just a need to get more students involved to come together as a united force to show city council that both Western and Fanshawe are the future of London.