How the Modern Era of Student Government Began 100 Years Ago at Vic U

^{As the 2023–24 VUSAC president, fourth-year Victoria College student Shane Joy’s research on the history of student leadership—sparked by his undergraduate thesis—culminated in a gala marking the centennial of the Students’ Parliament of 1924. (Photo by Will Dang)}

By Joe Howell 
 
Shane Joy, a fourth-year student studying history and international relations, became interested in the history of student government at Victoria University while serving as the 2023–24 VUSAC president. It wasn’t his role on the council that sparked his research, however. 
 
“I was actually reading about Egerton Ryerson for my undergraduate thesis on Indigenous-settler relations, and the history of Vic inevitably comes up,” says Joy. (Ryerson was a founder of Victoria College and both its first principal and first president.) “I stumbled upon these tidbits about student government and my interests just converged.” 
 
Joy discovered that the first student organization here appears to have been the Victoria College Philalethic Society, which existed from 1839 to 1842 for the “promotion of Truth.” But it was learning about the creation of the Victoria College Students’ Parliament in 1924 that really piqued his inner historian. 
 
Though the Students’ Parliament lasted for only six years—it became the Victoria College Union Council in 1930 and then the Victoria University Students’ Administrative Council, or VUSAC, in 1970—Joy says it represents the beginning of the modern era of student government at Vic U exactly 100 years ago. 
 
The Students’ Parliament marked the culmination of decades of work by student leaders toward self-governance as they went from “quasi-collective bargaining with administrators to a much more collaborative philosophy in recent years,” says Joy. 
 
The impetus for student self-governance can be traced at least as far back as 1906, when the Annesley Student Government Association was formed “in response to a general demand among students for self-government,” writes C.B. Sissons in A History of Victoria University. 
 
What propelled the demand from students? First, some background. In 1906, Annesley Hall was only three years old, having been built in 1903 as Canada’s first university residence for women. Vic U had been in Toronto for about 16 years, after federating with the University of Toronto in 1890 and relocating from Cobourg, Ont. 

^{The Victoria College Union Council talks business in 1970, the year it became the Victoria University Students’ Administrative Council, or VUSAC. Photo: Victoria University Archives (Toronto) Fonds 2001, Bursars Office, 1987.207}

Vic’s administration of the day was concerned that the school’s strict morality—rooted in its Puritanical and Methodist origins—was endangered by the new city life. Students living in Annesley were under particularly severe rules, including a prohibition on them leaving the residence after dinner without the written permission of the dean, writes Sissons. The Annesley Student Government Association emerged to bargain with the administration on the women’s code of conduct. 
 
The years between 1906 and 1923 saw various student proto-governments or councils put increasing pressure on the administration for more direct control over student affairs, negotiating authority and jurisdiction. 
 
An unsigned editorial in a 1909 edition of Acta Victoriana titled “STUDENT CONTROL FOR VICTORIA” claims there is “a movement on foot which has at least the sympathy of the faculty,” arguing a student government “cannot fail if we take it seriously.” 
 
The demands got louder. On the eve of the First World War, there were nearly twice as many students at Vic U as there were a decade prior, and in 1913 the administration granted them a limited measure of self-management. 
 
After the war, the administration began granting greater autonomy to the student body, culminating in the Students’ Parliament of 1924. 
 
The mission of the Students’ Parliament was “largely consistent with how VUSAC sees its role in student life today,” says Joy, who sits on the Board of Regents and spent the summer working at Toronto City Hall as an administrative assistant. 
 
“The role of VUSAC remains to represent the oftentimes diverse needs and interests of the student body and carry their concerns forth to administrators, working in conjunction with them to find solutions to some of the most pressing issues on campus.” 
 
On Friday, Oct. 4, student leaders from across Vic U were celebrated with a gala dinner at Burwash Dining Hall. The event was partly to mark the centennial of the creation of the Students’ Parliament, thanks to Joy’s research. 
 
Thanks also to Jessica Todd, records manager and archivist at Vic U, for her research assistance. 

This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2024 issue of Vic Report.