Rochdale College - The Unknown Student Sculpture

The Unknown Student statue is a testament to what was the decline in hippie Yorkville culture in the late 1960's. Yorkville was in the process of being gentrified, and Rochdale College - at the time a student-run alternative school and co-operative - began to take in other elements of counterculture, including homeless squatters and biker gang drug dealers.

At the time, universities were centres of political idealism and experimentation. Rochdale College was established as an alternative to traditional, industrialized education. They emphasized students finding their own way, organizing around common interests, and using available "resource people" (many of whom were academics) to hold informal sessions. Sadly, such an ideal made it difficult to sustain - as everyone was given a vote, and the body of students could not agree on how to regulate those not paying their rent or dues. 

The stutue today symbolizes perhaps the lost idealism of the time, and the end of a significant era in Toronto's bohemian culture. 

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