,
6 tweets,
1 min read
Read on Twitter
1/ Going back over the tuition/OSAP chaos of last few days, I am struck by two things. First, Tories were v. smart to package the finaid changes with the student union opt-out changes. Latter is *really* distracting student unions from dealing with the former. Tactical genius.
2/ But that's the political side. The *communications* side of this launch was chaotic and really badly done. Ministerial talking points were terrible. A lot of minor details are being misinterpreted and blown up into big deals, causing unnecessary student panic.
3/ Govt. got way too cute and tried to obscure the size and distribution of the cuts. Made it v. difficult for folks like me to describe the impact, so not surprised many journos mis-stated some things, thus causing a lot of worry and distress among students.
4/ I spent a big chunk of my noon-hour radio appearance on CBC explaining to students calling in that changes wouldn't be entirely disastrous; for instance, total aid packages wouldn't shrink (though loan/grant balance changing), grants weren't disappearing altogether, etc
5/ (speaking of which, who at OSAP/TCU can I bill for doing the government's basic goddamn comms job for them?)
6/ I think what happened is the government thought it could use buck-a-beer-style communications tactics when making changes to an insanely complicated social program upon which hundreds of thousands of people's futures depend. That, as it turns out, is a deeply bad idea.
