Growing Pains Ep. 3: A Culture You Can't Kill Part 2

Growing Pains is an Arthur Newspaper podcast about the corporatization of Trent University and how it affects students, faculty, and the surrounding community. We want to tell you the story of how this small, collegial, liberal arts university has grown into something else… something perhaps unrecognizable from its original form.

Part 2 of our episode about student activism is here! In Part one, we told you the story of how eight students occupied an administrator’s office at Trent University in 2001 to protest the undemocratic decision to sell off Peter Robinson College.

Now, we’re going to analyze these events, and bring this conversation into the present to ask, what has happened to Trent student activism in the two decades since? We examine the structural factors that shape and constrain student autonomy, and talk about ways forward for the student movement today.

Thanks to Dr. David Tough, Dr. Alison Hearn, and Ziysah von Bieberstein for their stories and contributions to this episode.

Podcast music: Sportsman Lucifer.

Growing Pains graphic: Cameron Noble.

Writing/Editing/Voice: Nick Taylor and Brazil Gaffney-Knox