A week ago, The Gazette published a piece by a McGill medical student passionately standing up on behalf of the tuition protesters (“Disdain, discrimination, violence: students deserve better than this,” Opinion, May 9).

I would like to present the counter-view in McGill’s faculty of medicine, noting that the faculty voted down joining the student strike in a well-attended general assembly.

The students who support the protest choose to frame it as an ideological struggle for the protection of an inalienable right – to free post-secondary education. That is a great idea in theory, but as is often the case with ideologies, it breaks down in practice. Funding is, and always will be, an issue in this world of ever-increasing costs.

Personally, I believe the most recent offers made by the government were very reasonable – creating a council to analyze the university budgets for cuts that would then be redistributed to reduce student fees. The students are outraged that they are expected to perform the task themselves, but why? If the students so deeply believe that there is fat in the budget to trim, they should be able find it.

They say that this is about accessibility to an education for those most in need. Do I believe that education should be accessible to all those who seek it? Yes, absolutely, and I doubt many people would dispute that. The offer made by the government recently to increase loans and bursaries for families earning less than $65,000 is the most concrete gain for those facing financial factors that may hinder their enrolment. A tuition freeze only benefits children of middle- to high-income families, who can and will pay more for their tuition, and that group size is not negligible.

There has been an overall defiant tone in the student movement that makes me uneasy. The refusal to compromise and negotiate – and for one of the major leaders to claim that they will “only demand” – seems counterproductive. A democratic society roots itself in compromise. Some criticize compromise because in the end both parties are left unhappy. I believe that the more important thing is that in the end both parties get a piece of what they want.

The government has made concessions that no doubt make it very unhappy, but the student leaders appear stoic and refuse to settle. This is not a zero-sum game, and the protesters need to stop seeing it as such. Because at this rate we are headed toward a very sad non-zero-sum situation where the students lose their semesters, and the government loses all the funds it would have collected in tuition increases because it must pay for all the extra work by police and other city workers.

This city has been in a state of turmoil for the last few months. I don’t want to get into the “who did what to whom” debate between the students and the police. Placing blame is not conducive to finding a solution, and neither party is completely free of misconduct. However, for those who wish to dramatize the matter, all I will say is to please compare the “police brutality” witnessed here to the police and military brutality seen in other countries in revolt in the Middle East.

I understand that the students have their youth and their passion to burn, and as a student, I do too. However, I am concerned about the self-righteousness of the protesters and their portrayal of those against the protest as “selfish” and “self-centred.” Perhaps we hold different ideals and care for different causes than the protesters, or perhaps we understand that in the real world, outside of academia, compromises are necessary.

With the new education minister in office, I hope that the protesters can step back from their hardline stance, reflect on how many students will be affected adversely if a deal is not made, and truly talk with the government with the understanding that negotiations require sacrifice on both sides.

As youths, it is easy to view concessions as a sign of weakness. It takes true maturity to appreciate the value of sacrifice and compromise.

Helen Hsu is a medical student at McGill University. She lives in Montreal.