Durham College Students---Exercise Your Student Power!

Hey Durham College Students...You live here for most of the year and have a city vote in municipal elections. Did you know that if Oshawa gets the general vote, it will provide you with a wonderful opportunity to take over control of Oshawa City Council?

By organizing a slate of candidates, and organizing your student body to vote for them, you can pass any bylaw you want to enhance your student life. You can provide permits for street parties in the student housing areas, or anywhere for that matter. Your leaders could even increase councillor salaries beyond the present exorbitant levels counting all of the perks, honoraria, expenses and allowances to make them richer than they've ever been. This would more than pay off their tuitions. As student politicians, they could even get into the student housing business with all the extra scratch?

With the general vote, councillors cannot be defeated so student politicians could do anything they want without fear of voter sanctions. Why not close the downtown for street parties every weekend? You could have a real bash! With 8 votes at the Region, you can be influential in getting taxpayer subsidized yearly student public transit passes. By "block voting" you can be the most influential "player" in Oshawa and Durham Region.

Just canvas your student body to see what they want and make that your election platform. I'm sure that a platform promising perks popular to the students at the taxpayer expense will gain you city council control. But, hey, don't take my word for it. Listen to Jack Layton's advice to college students in the video below about how he used student power to get both himself and his wife elected to Toronto City Council.

Even better, because many of you live out of town...you won't even have to cope as taxpayers with the havoc you're able to reap on the City of Oshawa. You'll just move on and move out...and the city taxpayers will pick up the bills. The general vote has tremendous opportunity for you.

Your fantastic gains through the general vote would be at the loss of Oshawa taxpayers. But don't worry about that. Oshawa should "PREPARE TO BE AMAZED" with the possibility of a student run Oshawa City Council. It could even function as your school "student council". Yeah for STUDENT POWER!

So students...how do you get student workers and voters to support your campaign? The answer is the universal student motivation...promise to throw a giant beer fest for workers and voters...if you win. That should be encouragement enough to get students to help and vote for you. With a little creativity, you could throw in some other motivating "entertainments" for students to multiply their efforts. Creativity is only limited to your imagination. The secret though...the party is only on if you win! This way you will be insured of a healthy and handsome city renumeration to pay off your supporters. If they don't get you elected...there is no cost! Sort of like buying votes...but it is no different from post election "victory parties" held at the federal and provincial levels and also by many municipal candidates.

One caution though. There has to be some overall student organization to insure that so many candidates do not run that you divide the student vote among excess candidates. If you run one candidate as mayor, for example, you will get all student votes and have a good chance of winning. If you run more than one candidate as mayor, you divide the vote and are less likely to win. Similarly you will only want to run 8 regional candidates and 3 local candidates so that you don't divide the student votes for these offices.

Students...You should thank our forward thinking and strategic Mayor Gray, and Councillors Pidwerbecki, Kolodzie, Henry, Parkes, Sholdra, and Mariempietri all of whom are supporting a move to the general vote to give you this wonderful opportunity.

Click on Jack Layton's video below to find out all about organizing and exercising your student power.