Well as you say the money is used for profit, but the universities are not for profit centres (there’s no shareholders) so that money is folded back into the universities. There’s not really a 1:1 ratio of extra money charged to the visiting students versus discounts to the Canadian students but without that money a lot of services for Canadian students would either be cut or decreased. Or there would be tuition hikes.

They sure do pay higher fees. Check again, I think maybe you misread. I’ve cut and pasted below. But yeah, they get a raw deal right across BC. (I don’t know enough about the universities outside of the province to comment). They pay two, three or more times as much and often receive far less in the way of services that normal students do.

As you said the post-secondary education system in BC could not survive as it is without their funds.

What I wrote:

“But what’s even wrong about ESL students who are just here for a few years to study at UBC or SFU? They pay much higher tuition than Canadian students, several times higher, and that extra revenue helps to pay to keep the (still too high) tuition fees of Canadian students lower.”

Sean used the term “cool” in a qualitative manner and said that ESl students could not be cool. I’d argue at the least that can be seen as xenophobic, and you are fully welcome to disagree with me. Ideally while being polite, but I’m not going to hold you to that.

Once again, because I guess I’m not using a large enough font, I don’t think that Sean’s a racist. I stated that in the post, in the comments and elsewhere. I think he said something that people took that way, including me, and instead of clarifying it, recanting it or spending ten seconds to assue us he wasn’t (at least until well after this post) he let people hide behind the secrecy of the internet and defend him with half the wit and cleverness as he’s able to marshall himself.

In the entire first paragraph of this post I made pains to state that I have a great deal of respect for Sean Orr’s work on the Morning Brew. I guess reading the post was too much work, but whatever it’s the internet anything longer than a Twitter post seems to freak people out.

If people want to imagine that this is some kind of grudge match between Sean and myself that’s their bits of kibble. I’ve never met him, I don’t know him. He seems like a fine guy. I’m sure he smells nice too. God forbid the internet goes a moment without some drama.

Again Sean has been a strong and important voice for the homeless in Vancouver and the downtown East Side in particular and he should be comended on that. Let’s quote from the very first paragraph of this post, “It’s always so easy to just ignore the problem, but having Sean Orr bang on about it nearly every day makes that harder to do and that’s a good thing.”

Anyway I’ve let people misread the post and leap on me. Whatever, at least I used my real name and left my email address. You might disagree with me, but at least you know I’m not hiding. I’m up for people disagreeing with me, I’m up for a real debate on racism, xenophobia or any sort of bigotry. If anyone wants that, then cool.

If people just want to turn Metroblogging Vancouver / Beyond Robson into some kind of Mac / PC, chunky / smooth type argument then that’s your deal. I let Tim, the publisher/owner/whatever of BR have his say. If I have issues with Beyond Robson they are 100% not related to Sean Orr, and unless I had real substantive issues I certainly would not air them on the internets.

That said hopefully you all have a good day. Go home, watch some reality television or play ping pong with your loved ones. Whatever you need to do to calm down.