Fight for education
German-born Krisna Saravanamuttu has never been to Sri Lanka, yet the South Asian island is always in his mind and his heart. As president of the York Federation of Students (YFS) at York University in North York, Ontario, the 24-year-old’s not just trying to advance student’s rights to lower-cost education, but he’s also constantly thinking about students back in Sri Lanka, who face tough roadblocks to post-secondary education.
“Tamil civil rights were being denied over the course of the years; the right to education was denied, too. Tamil students, starting in the 1970s, were required to actually get higher marks on the university admission test than the majority,” says Saravanamuttu about the effect of the long civil war on students.
Saravanamuttu, too, knows about challenge. He came to Canada with his family when he was only two years old, but was born in Germany where his family resided after fleeing their homeland. His parents left Sri Lanka so that they could offer their children a life free of persecution, not to mention a chance at higher education.
Growing up in a poverty-stricken neighbourhood in Scarborough, Ontario, shaped his life and motivated him to work toward equality for students. Through firsthand experiences and by witnessing discrimination and racial profiling, Saravanamuttu discovered his passion for social justice work.
“From a very young age, I always had a sense of equality. I noticed that there were disparities within society. I noticed some people are not treated as equal even though our government claims that everybody has the same rights and everybody is equal in this country,” he says.
Taking action through student organizations
As part of the YFS, the fourth-year criminology student is highly involved in the Drop Fees campaign and other initiatives looking to improve prospective students’ access to education.
“For me, the issues between what’s going on back in Sri Lanka with the students, and the students here, who are not able to go to post-secondary education, are very similar,” says Saravanamuttu.
Skyrocketing tuition fees at Canada’s colleges and universities pose a huge problem when it comes to students’ access to post-secondary education, and it’s something that Saravanamuttu has had to deal with personally in the past few years.
“A lot of friends from the community I grew up in are not able to go to college or university. It’s not that they don’t have the intelligence or the academic merit to go. Finances are an upfront barrier to go into school,” he explains.
Saravanamuttu is also participating in the Right to Education campaign, which looks at the experiences of students around the world, who are living under military occupation and access to education is denied. Sri Lanka is one of those countries.
“Three-hundred thousand Tamil people are being forcibly held within these confinement camps in Sri Lanka, and the majority are students. So these are individuals who are not able to go to school and think about their studies because they are being held at gunpoint,” he explains.
Despite all the obstacles he’s faced in his life, Saravanamuttu cannot be stopped. His roots, childhood experiences and the strong sense of combating injustice that he has developed drives him to continue his work.
“As students, it is up to us to try to shape the world we want to see in the future. If we feel that there are problems when it comes to equality and justice in today’s world, then we need to actively oppose that and work toward a world that benefits everyone.”
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