Camosun students can expect to see more advertising on campus this year, including a 12-foot long, floor-to-ceiling poster for Rogers Wireless in the Paul building at the Lansdowne campus.
As of October, the college’s advertising policy changed to allow further business partnerships in an attempt to increase revenue. The college has since paired up with Rouge Media, an advertising company that specializes in marketing to high school and college students.
Kathryn Le Gros, director of ancillary services at the college, says Camosun is using the ads to generate much-needed funds for the college, although she refuses to reveal how much money was involved.
“We have to be entrepreneurial,” says Le Gros. “The college needs to have the resources to make sure that we’ve got the educational services and facilities that students need.”
Advertising in schools, including elementary schools, is a controversial but growing trend in Canada. But administrators maintain it’s a necessary one.
“Tuition fees and government grants alone don’t cover the cost of our education,” says Le Gros. “We’re here to provide a really wonderful environment for students, and in order to do that we need to have a revenue stream that allows us to do that.”
The college has allowed advertising on campus for years, although never to the current scale. Le Gros hopes that under the new policy the number of ads will increase as time goes on, with no restrictions on the types of media used, such as audio or video.
Michael Glover, student services coordinator of the Camosun College Student Society (CCSS), says the CCSS wasn’t consulted before the college’s advertising policy was changed.
“The student society agrees that we should have input on all advertising that happens on campus, however, at the end of the day the college has the right to govern itself,” says Glover. “We will monitor the situation and, as always, seek to influence the college’s policies to the benefit of our members.”
One of the biggest arguments against advertisements in schools is that they encourage students to spend money that they don’t often have in the first place, such as their student loans.
Levi Karpa, a Camosun university transfer arts student, feels that educational institutions should be free of commercial enterprise altogether.
“Our universities are one of the last places that are free of explicitly biased information, and advertising is by definition an opinion,” says Karpa. “The advertisers stand only to make a financial profit from the ads, and that contradicts the goal of education.”