The Blue Chair Campaign

Our friends over at the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) have recently launched a campaign that they call Blue Chair. OUSA, to back up for a moment, is an undergraduate student-run lobby group that focuses on student issues in the Ontario provincial government.

Over the last number of years, they have run a number of issues based campaigns - from raising awareness around tuition deregulation to helping the province understand what it's like for students to live with thousands of dollars in debt.

While OUSA's intentions are excellent, their previous campaigns have lacked the ability to break through the clutter in a crowded student environment.

With the launch of the Blue Chair Campaign however, OUSA has been able to truly own an issue Provincially - helping first generation students find their way into the Post Secondary system.

What we like about Blue Chair is that it is a simple image that entices the viewer to find out a bit more about what it represents. Unlike a number of student run awareness campaigns, Blue Chair started as a tease on campus and slowly built towards a campus event.

The seven universities involved (Queens, Waterloo, Windsor, Laurier, Wester, Brock and McMaster) all held campus events on January 24th at their respective campus bars with the hopes of raising money.

OUSA has been updating the progress of the campaign on their Facebook page and we hope that each campus had an excellent few weeks executing the campaign (and that ample funds will be raised for First Generation Student programs!)