Archive for January, 2010
When your course load gets too heavy…
…there’s a solution
UBC student union president impeached—for one day
Error in vote reading changes “Yes” vote from 76% to 71% and fails to get 75% needed to pass
I’m pleased to report that UBC student politics are still as screwed up as ever. Due to incompetence of those hired to run the elections, students thought that Blake Frederick had been fired as AMS President, only to have results reversed 16 hours later.
Last year, you may remember that Frederick filed a human rights complaint to the United Nations, which was followed by Student Council, despite having overwhelming public support, proving themselves utterly unable to impeach him. Politics are fun.
When democracy doesn’t work well, people tend to believe that direct democracy can be a magical cure-all. So, a whopping 9 referendum questions were on the ballot in this year’s elections—including whether to impeach Frederick. It wasn’t going to be easy—per the AMS’ bylaws, it required 75 per cent to pass, and at least 3716 students (or 8% of AMS members) had to vote in favour as well.
And yet, Friday night, when election results were announced, the only referendum question to pass was…Impeaching Frederick!
The crowd roared. Beer flowed. Life was good. Even though the newly elected President (Bijan Ahmadian) was going to take office in two weeks time anyway, students against Frederick had scored a symbolic victory.
Not so fast.
Earlier today, the results were reversed. The Elections Committee announced that instead of 76 per cent of students voting for impeachment, only 71.2 per cent did. As a result, Frederick was saved—again.
“Reorganization of the output of the ballot referendum questions led to misappropriation of tabulated results,” Elections Administrator Isabel Ferreras told The Ubyssey, which is a wonderful jargony way of saying “we read it wrong.” AMS Elections are held almost exclusively online through online ballots.
Ironically, the question “Should the AMS actively lobby for reduced tuition fees and increased government funding?”, which supporters of Frederick put on the ballot to vindicate his belief that UBC students should do as much as possible to get tuition reduced, originally didn’t have enough “yes” votes to pass quorum. However, that decision was also reversed after the Elections Committee realized their mistake.
In conclusion, Frederick is still president, his belief that the AMS should lobby for lower tuition has been accepted by students, and yet, 71.2 per cent of students voted for his impeachment. I’m not sure what all of this means, except that once again the largest student union in Canada looks pretty silly. What else is new?
Sidenote: The question on whether students should pay a $5 penalty that would go to student engagement if they failed to vote, which our own Noah Mazereeuw took a hard stance against, failed badly, with only 37.7% voting in favour of the measure.
UCalgary seeking 47% tuition increase
Students set to protest
The University of Calgary is planning to increase tuition fees by as much as 47 per cent in some professional programs. Although tuition in Alberta is indexed to the consumer price index, the province is allowing an exception this year for selected programs. As reported by the Calgary Herald:
At least four core faculties — engineering, business, law and medicine — are targeted for the hikes, although masters programs for education and business administration are also being scrutinized and none of U of C’s professional programs is necessarily off the table, officials said.
Medicine students, for example, face a $4,000 “market modifier” increase. Added to the 1.5 per cent hike allowed each year, fees would jump by 27.8 per cent to $18,600, from $14,384 the year before.
The figures are only preliminary and are being used for discussion purposes on campus before they’re sent to the province for approval, said Colleen Turner, vice-president of external relations.
Meanwhile the students’ union has planned a “Day of Action” for Tuesday in protest of the tuition fee increase.
The National Post editorial board hates women’s studies
The Post’s “sexist drivel”—as one commenter called it—makes the case for why women studies will live on
Is the editorial board at the National Post made up of a bunch of sexist, “ill-informed jackasses”? That is what is being argued from the sidelines of social media—blogs, Twitter, Facebook, [insert latest online soapbox here].
The chorus of anger is in response to Tuesday’s editorial in the Post called “Women Studies is Still With Us.” The column begins by outlining the news element: there have been reports that women studies programs are disappearing from Canadian campuses, they say. This is presumably a retort to the Toronto Star columnist Catherine Porter’s lament that Queen’s University is changing the name of their women studies program to “gender studies.”
The Post goes on to play the skeptic, but accomplishes sounding more like a self-proclaimed conspiracy theorist revealing what was on the front page of yesterday’s paper: “We would wave good-bye without shedding a tear, but we are pretty sure these angry, divisive and dubious programs are simply being renamed to make them appear less controversial.”
Uh… duh. As Maclean’s OnCampus reported last weekend, and Porter herself acknowledges, no one is claiming these classes and programs are gone, only that the name is changing. Porter is annoyed, apparently because of her nostalgic attachment to the resulting “empowerment” of seeing the word “woman” in the course calendar of her university days (which is sentimental nonsense, if you ask me). OnCampus’ Robyn Urback argues more rationally when she notes that the change to “gender studies” reflects the contemporary study of women’s role in society. “To properly understand the role of women in society you have to understand the role of men,” she writes. Furthermore, by depoliticizing the program by removing the word “women” surely the subject of study can move on to a more nuanced study of gender in society.
So, does the change make things less controversial? Probably. Moving the subject of women studies away from its traditional “man-hating” subject matter–if you will–you’d think would please the Post. But, nope, the editorial board sees the change as a manipulative way of masking women studies academics’ true intentions: to crush all things good in our society.
The Post then argues that women studies programs are downright evil. (I don’t think that’s an exaggeration.) Radical feminism at the core of these programs, they write, has wreaked havoc on families, labour law, court systems, constitutional freedoms and “even the ordinary relations between men and women.” According to the Post, women studies programs are responsible for the entirety of what feminism got wrong: they are to blame for ill-advised affirmative action in hiring, for convincing young women that all men are victimizers, for divorced men who find themselves unfairly blocked access to their children, for systematic unfairness in the Supreme Court, for increasing taxes with frivolous programs like universal child-care (because child-care is a women’s issue, right? sigh), and for insisting that men shouldn’t try to write novels from a woman’s perspective. These crazy women studies professors have gone so far as to argue that “all heterosexual sex is oppression because its ‘penetrative nature’ amounts to ‘occupation.’” And the result of all of these sins? “Executives, judges and university students must now sit through mandatory diversity training.” Boo hoo.
Although the Post doesn’t go to the trouble of letting the reader know when and at which university these sins were committed nor who said the things they quote in their editorial, I don’t doubt that each of these transgressions occurred at some point in history on some university campus. Nevertheless, it’s a cheap shot to seek out the most extreme of feminist arguments to make the case for why women studies should be extinct. Any movement will have its extremists—in this case, those who argue that sex is, by definition, “occupation”—and a rational person would look past those and listen to the majority in the middle.
Although I’m female, I don’t call myself a feminist; I believe that most of the work on that front is done and I feel alienated by extremists who continue to decry the inherent chauvinism at the basis of our society. Nevertheless, if women studies are to blame for all of the bad that resulted from feminism, as the Post would have you believe, then we should also applaud them for feminism’s accomplishments, which far outnumber the downsides. No progress in society happens without some steps backwards.
Even if equality has come a far way in our society, there continues to be a role for women’s studies, if not in leading the feminist movement, then in the study of its history. Only an ignorant person would look at our country and see perfect equality and access to achievement, and only in paying tribute to the inequalities of the past will we remember how far we’ve come and why it is important.
Unfortunately, the Post’s editorial accomplishes the opposite of its intention. Instead of making a compelling argument for why women studies programs should be a thing of the past, it only demonstrates why they are essential to our future.
First Nations University funding under threat
Financial irregularities, governance problems continue to plague the embattled institution
The Saskatchewan government’s warning that it could cut off funding to the First Nations University of Canada within days has put the future of the embattled school in question and left students hoping that it will survive.
“We love our institution and we don’t want to lose it,” said Cadmus Delorme, with the First Nations University of Canada Student Association. “We’d like to see it stay within First Nations/Indian education, but if that’s not working today, then we want assurance that it’s going to be there tomorrow. If it has to have other institutions come in and take it over for a while, then let it be.”
Delorme was among six students who met Thursday evening with Advanced Education Minister Rob Norris. It was Norris who said earlier in the day that he expects a decision soon about whether to continue supporting the aboriginal university in light of ongoing governance problems and allegations of financial irregularities. “It would be accurate to say that there is significant jeopardy regarding public funding for First Nations University,” said Norris.
The province has been patient, Norris said, but it is concerned that a report on how to fix governance at the school is late. It was supposed to be submitted by the end of January, but now won’t be ready until mid-February.
“Quite simply, that’s not acceptable for us,” Norris said. “We know what needs to be done. We know that the board needs to be reconstituted. We know it needs to be a smaller board and there are opportunities for the creation of something like a senate … This was to be a blueprint of how to get there.” Norris suggested the fact the report isn’t ready “reinforces to me (that) the prospects for governance change continue to drag on.”
There are also worries about new allegations of financial irregularities, the minister said. A wrongful dismissal suit filed by Murray Westerlund, a former financial officer of the aboriginal university, alleges there were questionable travel expenses and paid vacation time. An internal audit has been ordered and is to be completed by March.
Norris said $675,000 in conditional funding won’t flow to the school until the allegations are resolved. But the big debate is around funding for the next school year — the province provides about $4 million to $5 million in annual support.
The federal government provides the aboriginal school with about $7.2 million annually. However, there are conditions on a portion of that funding and Ottawa is still holding back $1.2 million.
“The $1.2 million is dependent on two reports that FNUC still has to submit to us. The first one is a report on governance and the second is a comprehensive action plan,” said Rod Desnomie, a Regina-based spokesman for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. “We have not received those yet.”
The governance report was due Nov. 30 and the action plan was due Jan. 1. Desnomie says the money won’t flow until the reports are submitted, reviewed and accepted by Indian and Northern Affairs.
There have been longstanding concerns with how the Regina-based university is run and questions about academic freedom and political interference from the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations. The federation was not immediately available for comment Thursday.
Union rejects college’s final offer
OPSEU won’t bring deal to teachers
The union representing Ontario community college faculty has rejected management’s “final” offer, and refuses to bring it to teachers for a vote.
Ontario’s College Compensation and Appointments Council made the offer to OPSEU on Wednesday after several days of talks. After the union rejected the offer, college management asked OPSEU to bring it back to their 9,000 members for a vote. The council said the offer was better than previous ones because it shortens the contract to three years, instead of four, and offers a slightly higher salary increase.
“We’ve been bargaining for quite some time and we’ve offered everything we can afford and everything we can accept,” said Nancy Hood, vice-chair of the college’s academic bargaining team. “It reflects what we can do in this current environment.”
Hood said the council was still waiting Thursday for an official response from the union, but OPSEU spokesman Greg Hamara said the union will not be putting the offer to its membership for a vote. “Our members in effect rejected the final offer when they authorized the bargaining team to call a strike if we failed to reach an agreement, and that happened on Jan. 13,” Hamara said.
If the college wants the offer put to the teachers, he added, it can present it itself because the only thing the union will consider taking to its members is an agreement recommended by the union. Negotiations are ongoing and neither side has walked away from the table.
In an “Urgent Report” Wednesday night, the council expressed disappointment that the union’s bargaining team had rejected the offer. “We have requested that the union take this final offer of settlement to their membership for a vote,” the report said. “This will allow faculty to decide for themselves whether or not they wish to accept the offer.”
Hood said it wasn’t up to the colleges to present the offer to the teachers, but felt they deserved “the democratic right to choose whether they want the offer or not.”
“It’s the union’s membership and it’s their responsibility to take it to their members,” she said.
About 57 per cent of the teachers who voted earlier this month gave OPSEU a strike mandate to back their demands. A strike would curtail classes for as many as 500,000 students.
The Canadian Press
U-Pass gets a chance in Ottawa
City council votes 22-2 in favour at budget meetings
After a lengthy debate over pricing, Ottawa’s city council voted to give the university transit pass pilot project the go-ahead at budget deliberations Thursday night.
The proposed project still has to pass a referendum question in the upcoming student government elections at both Carleton University and the University of Ottawa before the pass will begin next school year.
The pass will cost $145 per term pass and will be folded into mandatory undergraduate annual fees. This price is discounted from the $242 students normally pay for the OC Transpo semester pass.
A referendum question requires 1,000 student signatures before it can appear on a ballot.
If the referendum vote doesn’t pass at either school then the pilot project will be cancelled.
Carleton’s student newspaper, The Charlatan, quotes Carleton University Students’ Association president Erik Halliwell as saying he is positive the referendum will pass.
“There are strength in numbers,” Halliwell told the Charlatan. “And students are becoming more of a priority.”
The paper reported that project will cost the city an estimated $3 million taken from the city’s transit reserve fund.
- photo by Dick Penn
Tipping the gender scale
Women outnumber men on Canadian campuses, and admin should steer clear of the gap
The boys are back on campus. At least in the United States.
According to a report by the American Council on Education, the gender gap on campuses has stabilized as the number of men enrolled in bachelor’s programs increases.
So, does this mean Canadian men will soon follow suit? Are the days of the female majority on campus numbered? Should we scrap plans for aggressive male-recruitment initiatives?
Who knows. Who cares. And definitely.
It’s no secret that for the past few years, women have outnumbered men in Canadian undergraduate enrollment. But lately, it’s become a problem. At least for some.
“I’m going to be an advocate for young white men,” Indira Samarasekera, president of the University of Alberta, told the Edmonton Journal last October. Samarasekera said she’s concerned about what the future will look like because of this gender imbalance. “The [. . .] worry is that we’ll wake up in 20 years and we will not have the benefit of enough male talent at the heads of companies and elsewhere.”
Ah, I’d like to see her stand at the front of a women’s gender studies class and say that.
Hilarious mental pictures aside, I cannot grasp this incessant push for (assisted) equality. To what end are we to ensure that men and women are equally represented in all programs and fields? When does ‘some’ presence become ‘enough’? And does it not undermine the capabilities of an individual or group for one to become a self-appointed hand-holder?
Apparently not. “There is a feeling men can take care of themselves – clearly that is not true,” Samarasekera told the Globe and Mail. “If that were true, we wouldn’t be seeing this growing gap.”
Whether or not the gap is indeed budding, the meddling should be nipped. Even if women outnumber men in lecture chairs now, I’m sure there will be a suit and tie or two behind the CEO desk later.
Editor’s note: This post has been updated
UBC student union prefer cows to Nietzsche
AMS is at it again with a proposal to impose a $5 punishment on non-voters.
In yet another ridiculous move on the part of the UBC Alma Mater Society, the country’s largest student union is proposing a $5 fine imposed on all students at the beginning of the year, to be refunded only if you vote in their elections. While I tend to agree with Nietzsche that those who don’t want to participate in democracy shouldn’t be forced to, since their lack of interest will actually harm the democratic process, the AMS seems to be suggesting that the electorate will be suddenly motivated to rigorously research and weigh all the candidates, making the decision they think is best for their school and enhancing the oh-so-important-and-relevant democratic process of student union elections. Ha ha ha.
In fact, the AMS would really just be herding uninterested cows into the ring to mindlessly moo in order to avoid a fee. The random button clicking that would surely ensue (voting for AMS elections is done online) would ultimately reduce the representativeness of the union, replace quality with quantity, and degrade the democratic process in favor of louder mooing.
Let’s hope those who actually vote voluntarily on this referendum, which is being proposed alongside the AMS general election this week, do so with more thought than would be on display next year should this proposal pass.
TWU in its own words: special no-straw edition
By Trinity Western University’s own admission, it takes many of the big questions of life as already answered.
My previous post was accused of portraying religious scholars as straw men, an accusation levelled at me by faculty and alumni of Trinity Western University itself.
Related: Academic freedom at Trinity Western. Also see: The end of the religious university? And: Christian universities are necessary.
In response, I have compiled the following, from TWU’s own website, explaining its views on education. There, TWU makes gestures towards openness, but those gestures are constantly contradicted by statements indicating that many of the answers to life’s most important questions have already been provided and no new answers are needed or possible. Consider (emphasis mine):
“Both individually and corporately Trinity Western wholeheartedly embraces all the Bible teaches in regard to faith, ethical commitments, and way of life, believing it to be the ultimate standard of truth and hope.”
“We base our teaching and scholarship on revealed truth, and encourage our students to consider carefully the basic worldview tenets of a biblical Christian faith.”
[TWU’s philosophy] “ invites students to consider and embrace evangelical Christian faith. One goal of our mission is to develop thoroughly Christian minds.”
“Distinctive Christian approaches are usually more evident in the humanities than in the natural sciences. But even for the latter we are engaged in faith-based learning.”
“Faith-based and faith-affirming learning intends to lead students to know God and His world.”
“We believe the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, to be the inspired Word of God, without error in the original writings, the complete revelation of His will for the salvation of men, and the Divine and final authority for all Christian faith and life.”
“The Bible is sourced in God in a unique way that cannot be said of other literature. As a final, finished product the biblical scriptures are “without error” and can be relied on with full confidence as an authoritative guide to Gods message of salvation and the manner of living appropriate for Christian people.”
“Scripture will be of little value if it does not govern how we live out our lives both as individuals and as a corporate body. Therefore we gladly embrace it not only for our doctrinal commitments, but also for our daily lives.”
“Therefore, the faculty and staff of Trinity Western University strive to encourage confidence in the authority of the Bible and respect for its beauty, truth, and unique and divine character. We deplore an indoctrination approach that discourages authentic investigation, but we are satisfied that the truth of the Scriptures can meet any challenge.”
“Increasingly we are facing a ‘crisis of authority’ in every area of society which has resulted in a breakdown in such areas as government, business, educational institutions, the family, and even in the church. In contrast to this approach, our loyalty to Scripture requires us to reject the assumption that there is no absolute truth to which human beings must submit.
“general knowledge in itself is not sufficient to lead to salvation. That is why we need a verbal divine utterance by which God not only supplements our knowledge of the created order, but by which he also corrects our interpretation of it. Thankfully, God has given us such an authoritative Word in Scripture, the ‘complete revelation of His will for the salvation of human beings.’
So, to summarize, TWU welcomes open debate on all subjects except the following:
- Is there a God? [yes]
- If there is, what is the nature of God? [see Bible]
- Does the Bible have any special status? [yes]
- Are all religions equally valid? [no]
- Are there parts of the bible that are immoral such as its denigration of women or its endorsement of slavery? [no]
- Where did the universe come from? [God]
- How did life begin? [God]
- How does one live a moral life? [see Bible]
- What is a meaningful life? [see Bible]
- Can we fully understand the world through experience and reason? [no]
- Is there such a thing as truth? [yes]
- What is truth? [see Bible]
While I am sure that on an individual level, TWU has many fine faculty members doing good work, I cannot see how, in general, a student can pursue a skeptical, open-minded course of study on these vital questions when the university itself proclaims these questions to have been settled. Similarly, I cannot see how a student who submits an essay questioning, say, the existence of God could be graded fairly given the ideological framework of the university.
To be sure, all professors have biases and ideology, but when an institution deliberately sets out to ensure that all faculty have the same biases and ideologies, it drastically reduces the opportunity for real intellectual growth, the opportunity afforded to students who are exposed to conflicting points of view on the most important questions that face us.
Raise fees!
Queen’s University students propose added fee to boost operating budget
While most students are usually screaming and protesting about exorbitant tuition fees across the province in the annual Drop Fees campaign, two students at Queen’s University are trying the opposite approach.
Students Morgan Campbell and James Simpson a proposing a new $70 opt-outable fee to be paid by students to support services like TAs, maintenance and teaching materials, the Queen’s Journal reported. The fee would have to be adopted via student referendum.
Campbell told the Journal: “The amount our tuition can increase each year does not keep up with the rising costs.” This may be true, as it is not just Queen’s University that is experiencing a shortage in funds projected for this year and next year’s budget. According to the article Queen’s is looking at a projected $8.3 million deficit for their 2009-2010 operating budget.
But while the Drop Fees campaign has never really made any sense in light of these continuing deficits, this new plan to give the university money instead of trying to convince them to stop taking so much from students doesn’t seem to solve the problem either. By Campbell’s own admission, student response to their idea hasn’t been great, as is to be expected when asking students — who already scrape for laundry and beer money — for some extra cash. Though the $70 may not seem like a lot in the grand scheme of tuition dollars, it’s extra money Campbell is proposing students aren’t obligated to give, so why would they?
It’s not that they aren’t “aware” of the issues as Campbell argues. It’s that they don’t want to.
The article quotes Campbell as saying their talks with the school’s administration have been more positive. No kidding. You’re telling the university you want to round up some extra cash for them instead of protesting fees on their doorstep. In that favourable turnaround the administration could be nothing but supportive.
While Campbell’s argument is correct in that a boost in the operating budget would go towards improving services that directly or indirectly benefit students, it is flawed in that the money should be coming from students’ pockets.
Even if every Queen’s student contributed $70, which they won’t, the point is that you’re paying into an institution and you’re expecting to receive a certain level of education and services you payed for. Its not a selfish argument, but if students take the approach the university does, that ultimately a university is a business and as students you are its customers, the logic fails. If you pay $1.99 for McDonald’s to make you a cheeseburger without cheese, you wouldn’t throw $5 at them so that they can improve the quality of the burger and make it right next time.
You’d send the burger back. While it’s hard to assess the quality of the deal Queen’s students are getting, paying more for services they already deserve isn’t the answer.
Getting the most out of your professor
Professors dish on how students can learn more from them outside of the classroom
There is one person in your lecture theatre who is a little different from everyone else. No, I’m not talking about that guy who never bathes, who whispers to himself as he takes notes, and who seems completely unaware that his nose whistles every time he exhales.
I’m talking about the one standing up at the front of the room, talking; the one who everyone who isn’t playing with their computer or phone is watching: your prof.
I’m sure that your prof seems like a lofty intellectual who is much too clever, important and busy to want to talk to the likes of you, but I’ve got news for you: your prof is a human being, and it gets lonely up there at the front of the room when you’ve spent an hour talking and nobody has asked a single question or given any other indication they’ve understood a word you’ve said.
Educating you and making sure that you understand the course material is part of your prof’s job, and talking directly to your prof can make a world of difference to what you get out of a class. What you may find surprising is that your prof (probably) wants to talk to you. Don’t take our word for it; we surveyed an assortment of professors from across the country and two of the most common things we heard from them were that they enjoy talking to students, and that too few students take the time to talk to their professors outside of class.
Talking to students lets profs know that they’re actually getting through. “I love it when students come to me and ask questions,” wrote professor Carolyn Eyles of McMaster University. “It shows they are interested in the material and I’ll always spend time with them.”
The questions students ask provide professors with valuable feedback about their communication style, letting them know what is and what is not being understood by their classes. “I do learn a lot from student questions. I learn to communicate a lot better,” said Patangi Rangachari, also of McMaster.
But what can talking to your professors do for you? Lots. There are reasons why you go to campus every day, instead of just staying home and learning from a textbook.
The most obvious thing your professor can do is help you understand something from the lecture or the readings that you just can’t get. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and there is more than one way to approach whatever concept you’re having trouble with. “Explain to us where we came short in the lecture, and we will offer you another perspective on the issue so you can understand it better,” says Mercedes Rowinsky-Geurts of Wilfred Laurier University.
If you talk to them in person, many professors will give you a more detailed preview of what is going to be on an upcoming exam, to help you focus your studying. Some will even provide sample exam questions to practice on. Profs will discuss essay topics with students, and may be willing to go over an outline or even a complete draft of your essay with you.
College strike talks resume
OPSEU releases details of negotiations.
Negotiations between Ontario’s colleges and the union representing faculty have resumed, after faculty voted in favour of a strike on Jan. 13. The two sides were back at the bargaining table on Jan 19. Towards the end of the week, a provincial mediator advised a recess from negotiations. Talks are set to resume Tuesday Jan 26.
On Saturday, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, released an update of the negotiations so far. Initially, the colleges had proposed a 1.75 per cent wage increase for the first two years of a four-year contract, and a 2.0 per cent increase during the final two years. That proposal has been amended to include a 2.0 per cent increase for the second year. OPSEU had been asking for a 2.5 increase in each year of a three-year agreement.
OPSEU also notes that the colleges:
withdrew their demand to increase retiree life insurance premiums. The imposed term would have increased the costs to retirees five-fold. withdrew their demand that an employee who changes from employment at one College to a different College would lose the right to continue with the pension plan. amended the list of arbitrators withdrawing some of the persons they had added when terms and conditions were imposed on November 18.
As for OPSEU, the union has amended their proposal on academic freedom. Whereas before they were calling for academic freedom to be protected in colleges to the same extent it is protected at universities, the union has revised their proposal to more closely align with management’s position, to “make it clear that faculty, in the exercise of academic freedom, remain accountable to external accrediting and regulating bodies, the Ministry, the terms of the Collective Agreement, and program requirements.”
Despite these advancements, both sides remain divided over the recommendations of the Joint Workload Task Force report. Although both sides agreed to the recommendations in March 2009, they are at odds over what it entails. The more than 500 page document made recommendations regarding flexibility in workload, evaluation of faculty, out of class assistance for students, and professional standards and relationships.
OPSEU represents 9,000 academic staff at Ontario’s 24 community colleges. If a strike occurs, it would not be held until the middle of February. Some 500,000 students would be affected.
For all of our coverage of a looming college work stoppage, please click here.
The end of the religious university?
The debate over Trinity Western University is merely a skirmish in a long war. A war that traditional religion is bound to lose.
I have been following with great interest the debate stirred up recently about the nature of Trinity Western University and its statement of faith required of all instructors. Much of this has spiralled off into debates over the nature of absolutist vs relativist belief and whether there is really such a thing as secular and so on. But I think the issue is, at heart, a simple one.
A university’s main goal should be the rational pursuit of knowledge and truth. Traditional religion, premised as it is on faith and revelation, is incompatible with that goal.
Related: Academic freedom at Trinity Western? Also see: TWU in its own words: special no-straw edition, and Christian universities are necessary.
Take, for example, Milton’s Paradise Lost, which I am teaching to my introductory literature students right now. Paradise Lost attempts a defence of God’s justice in the light of evil and suffering in the world. This, of course, is a knotty issue and one that philosophers have struggled with over the centuries, and any decent presentation of Paradise Lost must at least acknowledge the complexity of the philosophical problems that the poem raises. If evil exists in the world because humanity — in the form of Adam and Eve — have brought it upon themselves, why is there so much evil? Why are children made to suffer in this world without having done anything wrong? For that matter, why should any humans suffer for the crimes committed by their ancestors? There may be good answers to these questions, but any responsible professor will have to acknowledge that the problem of evil may pose insurmountable difficulties to traditional theism. But how can the English professors at TWU propose such a possibility if they are committed to traditional Christianity “without reservation” as their statement of faith requires?
Let me put it another way. Imagine that you are a student and you have written a paper and received a low grade on it. You go to your professor and the following conversation ensues:
YOU: I believe I deserve a higher grade on this paper.
PROF: Okay. Why is that?
YOU: Well, that may be, but I felt inspired to write what I did. I really felt that God was speaking to me when I wrote that paper.
PROF: Hmm… that’s strange. Because I really felt that God was speaking to me and told me to give you an F.
YOU: But I have faith in this paper.
PROF: And I have faith in my red pen.
The above is absurd, of course, because there can be no resolution to this disagreement. How can you argue about belief when the only reason for the belief is the belief itself. The only real standard for university work must be the conventions of reasoned scholarship. Did the paper conform to the standards of the discipline? Did it cite appropriate evidence? Were its arguments logical? Was it clearly expressed?
A university based on traditional religion cannot claim to value any of these standards very highly since religion, as it is normally practiced, discounts evidence and reason in favour of the choice to believe, otherwise called faith. Faith, of course, is the right of the believer, and I will always defend the right of citizens of this country to believe what they choose and to express that belief. And I have no objection to any religious group setting up whatever schools or colleges they like (provided they are not funded with public money). But we should hold institutions called “university” to a higher standard.
Eventually, I think, the problem will solve itself. Religious universities will fade away as more and more people feel free to evaluate traditional religion with an even hand and find that, at its heart, its claims are nonsense. Christianity is very quickly going the way of Greek mythology, becoming a series of shared stories embodying potentially valuable lessons, but not an account of the world to be taken literally. Does anybody really believe that Noah saved all the animals of the world on the Ark? Or that Joshua made the sun stop in the sky? Most sensible Christians that I know are not dogmatic or evangelistic; but then, Milton would have considered them atheists. Even devoted academic Christians are fast becoming near-atheists, increasingly seeing the Bible as a series of metaphors and fables, and God as merely an underlying force, rather than a personal being.
No doubt a few old-fashioned die-hards will hang on for a while yet, maybe centuries yet, but the day will come when TWU’s statement of faith won’t matter a bit. Because no one in their right mind will sign it.
Needless lament for the loss of a name
“Women’s studies” becomes “gender studies” . . . and rightfully so.
What’s in a name?
Is it, “That which we call a rose?” Or, “Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame?” How about, “A history of structural and psychological oppression wrought with prejudice and inequality to capitulate only through ongoing and relentless insurgent pressure?”
Or, maybe it’s just a name.
Related: The National Post editorial board hates women’s studies
Queen’s University has become the latest school to change the name of their “Women’s Studies” program to “Gender Studies.” And some people, such as Toronto Star columnist Catherine Porter, aren’t celebrating the rechristening.
Recalling her time as a student at McGill University, Porter writes:
I’d spent the summer flipping through the course catalogue, stomach down on my bed. There were all the history and English literature courses I would end up taking, the descriptions filled with names including Plato, Charlemagne and Shakespeare.
Then, turning the page, I saw the word that was missing elsewhere — woman. It was empowering.
It still is.
I’m very glad to hear Porter had a fulfilling class selection experience, but I’m more pleased to see universities shifting with the times. If that means swapping “women” for “gender,” so be it.
While I will explain why I’m in favour of the name change, I don’t seek to examine the merits of a women’s/gender studies program, nor do I wish to undermine the history of enormous struggle heaved by the women before me to bring society where it is today. But “today” is just what I’m going to focus on. And, in my opinion, “Gender Studies” is the more appropriate and relevant program title for contemporary study.
I’ll start with the obvious. To properly understand the role of women in society you have to understand the role of men. The history of one gender can’t be contextualized in a vacuum. “Gender Studies” better encompasses that idea; it is simply the more correct term. Furthermore, I think the name change will entice a greater breadth of student applicants. Those who have studied feminist literature know it often goes beyond the study of women, incorporating theory on many other forms of oppression (such as religious, racial and ethnic). “Gender” speaks to a wider audience. It is more inclusive (yes, I’m using that word) and doesn’t reek of an “us” versus “them” dichotomy.
Which brings me to some of my more general views on gender politics. (I’ve touched on some of these ideas in previous posts, but I’ll reiterate.) To be frank, I applaud dropping the “women” from “studies” because in doing so, I think it purges a very unnecessary proverbial “crutch.” Women want to be treated equally, right? So why call for special attention? To be perceived as equal, women need to present themselves as equal. After all, men are disadvantaged too, just in different ways. Women don’t need to victimize themselves by calling for special consideration. I think to do so is to insult all the progress we’ve made.
What a luxury it is to have these nomenclature debates. Nellie McClung, Jessie Gray, Dorthea Palmer wouldn’t believe.
I want my achievements to be successes for me as an individual, not as a woman. But if I keep reminding you how disadvantaged I am as a female, you’ll never see it that way.
Freud was a freak
Being from the 19th century is no excuse
I just finished reading a chapter in my psychology textbook. It gave an overview of the history of psychology, including the work of Freud. It described him as the “father of modern psychology,” and praised him for his “innovative ideas that continue to influence psychology, science, and the world at large.” And then it went on to describe some of his “revolutionary” theories.
After reading about the psychoanalytic perspective, I’m not exactly sure if “revolutionary” is quite the right way to describe Freud’s theories.
I’m thinking more along the lines of “totally bizarre, freaky, and creepy.”
A quick summary of Freud’s ideas:
- All boys want to marry their moms and kill their dads.
- There’s no such thing as a seemingly-innocent pencil collection.
- Your 18 month-old brother is going through an Oral stage, soon to be followed by an Anal stage, Phallic stage, and eventually a Genital stage.
Yeah, sure, it’s easy to dismiss and ridicule the ideas of someone from the 19th century. And sure, Freud did have some really important ideas. He explored the “unconscious” aspect of the human mind. He defined and conceptualized personality structures and stages. He just went a little overboard.
But let’s face it: early physicists, biologists, or astronomers from the 19th century weren’t freaks. It’s just early psychologists. Namely Freud.
Consider Sir Isaac Newton. When he proposed the idea of universal gravitation, he didn’t go off the deep end and suggest that objects are gravitationally attracted to one another because they’re going through a Phallic stage. Or because the Earth has repressed feelings of love for its mother and wants to kill its father.
Newton understood the difference between “scientific theory” and “revealing that I probably murdered my own father.”
Mature students want to be understood
Conference at Ryerson draws large numbers, raises important issues
Some time ago I wrote a series of posts concerning mature students, starting with this one. It became an interesting discussion on the various resources that are available (or not available) for mature students. And it was at least part of the motivation for a mature students’ conference that just occurred at Ryerson University, a year later, and where I recently had the pleasure of speaking along with other very interesting panelists.
Big kudos to the Mature Students’ Association at Ryerson (MSAR) for organizing the first-time event. Hopefully it won’t be the last. Certainly the response would justify a regular conference. Of the 130+ attendees most were from the GTA, but a small contingent came down from Guelph and a single intrepid soul ventured down from Lakehead. Additionally, a group of students skyped in from Mount Allison. Isn’t technology wonderful? In any event, the response was enthusiastic, to say the least.
I won’t attempt to summarize the entire content of the conference but a few impressions seem particularly significant. First, just about everyone who doesn’t come from York was deeply envious of the very significant support that mature and part-time students enjoy at York, through the Atkinson Centre. Clearly York has set the standard to follow — and indeed the ability to reference such a benchmark will likely do a lot of good for mature students at other institutions. Good ideas may be emulated elsewhere. And as mature students are a growing demographic, no institution wants to be left behind on this one.
Of course we talked about future employment and the job market. I believe as much as anyone in learning for the love of it, but mature students have even less margin to ignore the financial realities than other students do. Jeremy O’Krafka from RECSOLU spoke on that topic, which is an area where the needs and concerns of mature students diverge especially from those of “traditional” students. His anecdote about younger students showing up with parents to speak with prospective employers struck a particular chord, but that’s probably a topic for another article.
As for myself, I contributed the observation that however much an institution may support mature students, the vast majority of campus resources and opportunities will still remain general to all students. So finding a way to access those opportunities and networks, while perhaps more difficult for mature students, is nevertheless critical. But as so often occurs, I was partially preaching to the already converted. The students who organized and showed up for this conference clearly know how to access the resources available to them. Some even accessed funding from their unions to attend.
Participants referred, on several occasions, to recent stories about how mature students are “competing” with younger school applicants. I agree that coverage of this sort is symptomatic of an unhelpful attitude that suggests mature students are somehow less legitimate as students. But a better observation on this topic is simply that it’s the new market reality. We keep hearing about how we’ll all have several careers, right? Well, for some, that necessarily suggests retraining. There’s no sense resenting older students for being where a lot of us will be in the future — there’s only a question of how the post-secondary system needs to adapt in response.
As a final observation, I sincerely hope that this growing interest among mature students in their shared identity and experiences forms the basis of a lasting association. The more mature students take an interest in their institutions and their education the happier I’ll be. Not only is it in their obvious self-interest to do so, but I also find that mature students exert a positive and productive influence on every student organization they become involved with. They are deeply motivated to be constructive — even while pursuing their criticisms — and a little more of that attitude would do a world of good for the student cause.
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Questions are welcome at jeff.rybak@utoronto.ca. Even the ones I don’t post will still receive answers, and where I do use them here I’ll remove identifying information.
Conflict of Interest and textbooks
More on the debate over assigning one’s own book.
My pal Carson Jerema takes the Globe and Mail to task for being upset by professors assigning their own textbooks. He is right, it seems to me, that this issue is overblown, and right to say that the argument that students won’t question the book rings hollow. The point he spends less time on, and the most interesting one it seems to me, is the Globe’s assertion that assigning one’s own book represents a conflict of interest.
The conflict of interest argument goes something like this. If a professor is going to assign a textbook to her class, she has an obligation to choose the best book she can. If she herself is in a position to earn money directly by choosing her own book, her personal financial interest is in conflict with her professional obligations. That is, how can one know whether she is assigning that book because it is the best, or just because she wants to line her own pockets? And depending on the class, this money may not be trivial: it may be thousands in royalties. Moreover, if a professor does not assign her own book in her own course, and that fact was picked up on by competing publishers, the overall sales of the book could suffer, costing the professor even more money. It’s not the same as being paid to teach the course itself.
In practice, though, the conflict of interest does not cause much harm. In the fields where sales are substantial — Intro Psych, Organic Chem — most textbooks are fairly similar, often indistinguishable in all important ways — I know because I used to sell textbooks for a living. So unless Professor Smith has written the one American Government textbook that really sucks, her students are no worse off than they would be with her own book. In more specialized fields, Professor Smith’s book may be the only up-to-date book there is, in which case Smith would be derelict in NOT assigning it.
To be sure, there are abuses. One professor at my university was said to assign his book in every class he taught whether it was relevant or not. Maybe it was relevant; I’m not an expert in his field and I didn’t take his courses. Or maybe he convinced himself that it was relevant to every single course, but that’s where the conflict of interest comes in. We can convince ourselves of a lot if we are to gain from it. But such cases are, in my experience, the exception. In fact, I think most professors are fairly circumspect about it. When I was a doctoral student, my department decided that all English courses must recommend a standard composition handbook, one that happened to be co-authored by the department chair. In anticipation of the raised eyebrows, the chair announced that he was donating all of the royalties earned thereby to charity. It seemed like a good compromise.
In short, the textbook conflict of interest could be a big problem, but as far as I have seen, it just isn’t.
So what if professors assign their own textbooks?
Should professors also have someone else prepare their lecture notes?
The Globe and Mail is in a huff over the shocking fact that professors write textbooks and then assign those textbooks to their students:
The idea of professors assigning their own books presents an ethical dilemma. Students may feel uncomfortable questioning the material, and there is arguably a conflict of interest in profiting from one’s own syllabus.
What precisely is the “ethical dilemma” and why is there a “conflict of interest”? Professors profit from teaching classes, that is they are paid to share their expertise with students. Is that morally suspect? Why is earning an income from compiling one’s expertise into a book different? Professors design course content — within accepted academic practice of course — and present it to their students as authorities on the subject. If, as the Globe suggests, there is a “power dynamic involved,” certainly such a dynamic is already in place the second a professor steps in front of a classroom, regardless of what textbook they assign.
Presumably if a professor writes a book, that means it is inline with the way he/she plans to teach the course. Why would it be desirable for them to use a book that might not fit the way the subject matter is planned? The Globe does allow that “there’s something to be said for having a professor who knows the course material inside out.” But the bulk of the Globe story winces at the notion that (shudder) students might feel uncomfortable having to read what their professor has written.What if they disagree with it? Well, I might ask, what if they disagree with what the professor says in a lecture? Should lecture notes also be prepared by someone other than the the person teaching the course?
If students are discouraged from asking questions, or critiquing course material, that says more about the competence of the professor (or the students) than it does about who wrote the the textbook.
Related: Conflict of interest and textbooks
CFS-BC loses legal battle over barring Kwantlen rep from board
Decision could have consequences for BC societies
The Canadian Federation of Students British Columbia chapter lost a legal fight this week when they were ordered to ratify a representative from the Kwantlen Student Association on their board. Since May 2008, CFS-BC has refused to recognize the KSA representative as a voting member of the board, even though each member student union is supposed to have a vote according to CFS bylaws.
Justice Brown ruled Wednesday that CFS-BC was in violation of the Society Act and their own bylaws by not admitting the KSA’s representative, Derek Robertson, who was twice voted to the position by Kwantlen students. The KSA applauded the decision. “I’m happy to see that the court has upheld the rights of individual student societies, and their students, to elect their own representation,” said Steven Lee, KSA chairperson, in a release. “This ruling makes the CFS-BC more accountable, democratic, and open to more than one point of view.”
However, Shamus Reid, chairperson of CFS-BC, warned that the ruling could have grave consequences for societies in BC. CFS-BC was concerned that Robertson “could not represent their interests,” Reid explained in an email to Maclean’s. “The BC Society Act provides that directors of a society are legally responsible for protecting the society from harm,” he added. “Despite this legal responsibility, Madame Justice Brown’s ruling denies directors the legal power to do so.” The KSA claims that CFS-BC directors are worried that Robertson would be disloyal to the CFS.
The KSA has long been in conflict with the CFS over a variety of issues, and last year held a defederation campaign to end the union’s membership in the organization. The referendum failed. Leading up to and during the the referendum, the two organizations were in and out of court.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated.
