Etay Beaton, a second-year marketing student, has a significant following on TikTok, including presumably Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
The premier specifically cited Beaton, who was known as Lotion Guy on the socials, as a reason for lowering OSAP grant limits to 25 per cent from up to 85 per cent. Lotion Guy suddenly transformed into OSAP Guy.
After giving his takes on various topics around Toronto, going by the name Lotion Guy, he would speak his mind as he’d moisturize his hands.
During Beaton's social media career, he’d made posts showing expensive items he purchased, saying, “We love you, OSAP money.” In a string of TikTok videos, Beaton had teased how OSAP funds were the reason he was able to make those purchases and was able to get away with it and even joke about it openly on TikTok.
Though fans of his found these TikTok videos funny, the joke quickly soured as Doug Ford had announced that 75 per cent loans, 15 per cent grants in OSAP starting this fall. A big change from the current 85 per cent grants that students expected.
“Folks, it’s in the red. It’s just not sustainable,” Ford told the media on Feb. 17. “We’d be closing down — if we continued going — some colleges and universities.”
While Ford states he’d fought for students in the past to keep tuition prices down, he “was getting massive pressure from the sector” as international students had been cut off by the federal government, Ford says.
Ford also criticized how some students have been spending their OSAP, saying there are “kids going out there buying fancy watches and cologne and not needing it.”
With these changes affecting students across Ontario and the future of their education, Beaton was an easy target to lay blame on, as some of his followers and peers would turn on him.
“You thought, we all thought it was fun and games," says Ella Marie, another student influencer.
In a TikTok she posted soon after OSAP changes were announced, Marie voices her distaste for Beaton's past posts flaunting purchases made with OSAP and his possible impact on the changes that took place.
“‘OSAP flex, look at this new watch,’ now we’re going to be screwed, fam. There’s going to be no way to get an education,” Marie says.
Though Beaton garnered a lot of early hate from frustrated students at first, students didn’t see his actions or the actions of a minority of students using OSAP as intended as a valid excuse for the changes made by Ford.
“That's just a distraction,” says George Gabriel, a history major at York University. “Okay, there's probably been someone who's misused their OSAP money.”
Gabriel doesn’t think that's the major issue, as OSAP is “the basic amount of money that allows these students to attend these universities in the first place.”
Gabriel called for a student strike, calling the demonstration the first step to finding solutions to why some students must rely on OSAP at all to ensure a higher level of education.
“The main way I pay, the main way I pay for my education is through OSAP,” says Ahi Jay, studying Human Geography at U of T.
“It's something that I rely on. I know a lot of people in my high school" who rely on the program, she said. "My sister, my cousins, like, we've all been on OSAP, and it's been a lifeline for us and for so many students.”
Amid her concerns over how she’ll pay for her education, Ford's criticisms of student OSAP spending and course choices ring hollow to her.
“I don't blame him for having to drop out, but when he's targeting students for trying to pursue an education he didn't want to get, I guess. I don't know,” says Jay, echoing what many students have felt.
“Just because we have our school expenses paid for, I live in Toronto," she says. "It's one of the most expensive cities in the country. Of course, students are going to be using OSAP money for living expenses.”
