Archive for Karen Pinchin
Karen Pinchin is the editor of Maclean's On Campus.
Liverpool Hope profs told to work on campus
University says it wants to provide a real learning community, not a virtual one
Lecturers at Liverpool Hope University are denouncing a new school policy that would require them to spend the full 35 hours of their working week on campus, unless they get permission to work somewhere else.
The policy makes it clear that working from home should be an “exception to the norm and can be authorised only by a dean.” It also says that, if permission is granted, that staff must keep “a careful note of activity” while they are off-campus.
The school says it is “unashamed” about the new rule, adding that it wants to be a real university community, not a virtual one, and that the policy is aimed at providing proper support for students.
However, according to the Times Higher Education, some professors say the policy questions both their professionalism and their academic integrity. The Liverpool Hope branch of the University and College Union has declared it will not recognize the new rule.
“I am totally shocked by this micromanagement… We are adults, we are capable of managing our time and responsibilities,” said one professor.
“This is managerialism gone mad — private industry rejected this nonsense years ago,” said another.
More specifically, the university says that flexibility is a necessary component of academia, and that the 35 hours don’t need to be from 9 to 5 each day. The rule was also recently changed to clarify that staff members with “recongised reseacher” status would be treated more leniently.
Conservatives accused of meddling in York U election
Students’ union says school received “persistent inquiries” about controversial vote
In yet another twist of York University’s fraught politics, the school’s student union is accusing two Conservative politicians — one federal, one provincial — of meddling in the union’s electoral process.
According to the York Federation of Students, 50 pages of e-mails obtained through a Freedom of Information request prove that federal MP Peter Kent and provincial MPP Peter Shurman tried to interfere with the group’s spring 2009 general elections.
During the controversial election, amid claims of voting irregularities from the losing slate, a more left-wing, pro-Palestinian group of students politicians beat out a more conservative, pro-Israel group. On appeal, the electoral board upheld the vote.
It was this appeal that prompted Kent and Shurman to send the e-mails, which both the YFS and the CFS say were inappropriate. According to the YFS, the e-mails reveal “persistent inquires” on behalf of the politicians into the election. This is, says the group, “part of a growing body of evidence that the federal and provincial Conservative parties are attempting to undermine democratic student decision-making.”
The group also alleges that Robert Tiffin, York’s vice-president of students, warned the group not to disqualify candidates who were caught violating the elections rules because the school and members of parliament “were watching the election closely.”
“The student elections were run in a fair and democratic manner and in accordance with our bylaws,” said Krisna Saravanamuttu, YFS president, in a press release issued Monday morning. “The York administration and members of the Conservative Party have no right or authority to interfere in the elections of the students’ union simply because they disagree with student criticisms of their policies.”
However, Kent and Shurman told The Star’s Louise Brown that the allegations are absolute nonsense. The two insist they were merely seeking updates on behalf of their north Toronto constituents, many of whom are Jewish students who were concerned about growing anti-Semitism at the school.
Tiffin says the university treated the politicians’ e-mails as requests for information, not as political pressure. He says the school has no intention of reopening the vote, although he is encouraging the YFS to participate in a review of the school’s election processes by an external accounting firm.
The dog ate my student loan payment form
If you’re staggering under student debt, bankruptcy might not be the best way out
According to a recent article in the The Toronto Star, the federal government’s Bankruptcy and Insolvency act makes it pretty difficult to dodge student loans through bankruptcy.
If you really want to declare bankruptcy, business writer James Daw says you’d better have a good excuse for not paying, “even after the five to seven years… that the legislation allows for such debts to be wiped clear.” Students must allow show that they tried in “good faith” to repay the loans and are now absolutely unable to pay.
After one 29-year-old medical student suffered a traumatic brain injury while cycling in Vietnam after graduation, she still owed Royal Bank $134,000, which was partially to cover her student loans. She was granted a discharge of those debts, and is now living on social assistance.
But, according to The Star, not everyone who asks for bankruptcy will qualify.
One Mississauga woman raised a 16-year-old son on her own until he decided to move in with his father. Although she currently makes about $53,000 a year, she declared bankruptcy in 2000 when she owed student loans totalling $21,000.
According to the bankruptcy registar, the woman made a few questionable decisions, which included selling her 12-year-old car and leasing a new Volkswagen to commute from Mississauga to her downtown Toronto job and to visit her son in Ottawa. She also provided her son with a cellphone.
Most Canadians would find it troubling that she wanted to be free of loans for the education that helped her find her job and qualify for a public sector pension, said the registrar. “There is no good reason why repayment of the loans for those studies ought not be made, over a lengthy period of time, perhaps even… her working life.”
Arizona State faces lawsuit over Kindle use
Advocates for the blind say technology is discriminatory
According to The Chronicle for Higher Education, the National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind are suing Arizona State University for its use of the Amazon Kindle to distribute electronic textbooks to students.
While the technology does have a text-to-speech function that reads books aloud, the groups say blind students can’t purchase books, select a book to read, or even activate the text-to-speech function.
“While my peers will have instant access to their course materials in electronic form, I will still have to wait weeks or months for accessible texts to be prepared for me,” says journalism student and co-plaintiff Darrell Shandrow in a joint statement released by the groups after the lawsuit was filed last week. “These texts will not provide the access and features available to other students.”
A university spokesperson says the school is committed to accessibility. “Disability Resource Centers are located on all ASU campuses. The centers enable students to establish eligibility and obtain services and accommodations for qualified students with disabilities,” said Martha Dennis Christiansen in a statement.
In response to the story at the Chronicle, reactions to the lawsuit include:
“If you can’t adapt to the technology, the future will pass you by! The majority should not be held back because of the limitations of a few!”
“There’s no reason to deny a student access to textbooks. Improve the technology.”
“People with disabilities pay the same taxes as everyone else, and thus deserve equal access to public amenities. It’s federal law, people.”
What do you think? Let us know.
Who is British Columbia’s highest-paid university executive?
UBC dominates the top ten, but it’s probably not who you think
The head of the University of British Columbia is earning one of the biggest paycheques in British Columbia’s public sector, according to new executive compensation figures recently released by the provincial government.
In the 2008/2009 academic year, UBC president and vice-chancellor Stephen Toope brought home $575,813, which includes nearly $200,000 in pension contributions and a housing allowance.
But topping the list for total post-secondary compensation in the province is former University of Northern British Columbia president and vice-chancellor Don Cozzetto. While he only received $47,958 in salary last year, he was also paid nearly $600,000 in severance, pension, relocation, tuition waivers, housing allowance, car allowance and vacation payout. That made him, by far, the best-paid public-sector employee in the province. (Right-click to open chart in new tab.)
With salaries ranging from $311,951 to Toope’s $575,813, the University of British Columbia dominates the top-10 list of top-earning university officials in the province. The university, in its disclosure, gives thereasoning behind the six-digit salaries.
“As one of the highest ranked universities in Canada, and one of the top 40 universities in the world, UBC seeks to retain and attract the best senior administrators it can by remaining competitive in its compensation practices with other large research-intensive universities,” reads the document’s preface. “Compensation values for senior administrative roles reflect a weighting of public and private sector values, with a clear weighting in favour of the public sector, and more particularly UBC’s university competitors in Canada and internationally.”
Toope is currently earning the third-highest salary of all provincial public service employees. Simon Fraser University president Michael Stevenson (at $483,665) and University of Victoria president David Turpin (at $467,671) are also on the top-10 list of overall compensation, weighing in at ninth and tenth respectively.
While high, these figures can be compared to the salary of University of Alberta president Indira Samarasekera, who earned $627,000 in salary and benefits in the 2007/2008 fiscal year. Her number two, provost Carl Amrhein, earned $618,000, while Phyllis Clark, VP of finance and administration, received total compensation worth $654,000 and Don Hickey, VP of facilities and operations, made $668,000.
In Ontario, McMaster University’s Peter George made $534,000 in salary and benefits in 2007/2008. Other top earners that year included University of Waterloo president David Johnston, who made $488,242 total compensation and York University president Mamdouh Shoukri, who, despite his university’s lengthy strike, took home $484,357. In fifth place was University of Guelph president Alastair Summerlee, who made a total of $464,013. For reasons discussed here, while pay packages may appear to be larger out West, it may be partly due to the fact that compensation disclosure by Alberta and B.C. universities is more honest and complete.
For more on university executive compensation, click here.
Charges against former UOttawa physics professor dropped
Rancourt says the university gave police false information
Trespassing charges against former University of Ottawa physics professor Denis Rancourt have been dropped.
Last December, the university suspended the controversial professor, locked him out of his laboratory and told his graduate students to find new supervisors. He was banned from campus and, in an extremely rare move against a tenured professor, the school’s administration recommended his dismissal.
Two weeks later, while hosting his three-year-old radical documentary film series at the school, Rancourt was arrested by police and charged with trespassing.
Rancourt was officially dismissed March 31 at a meeting of the executive committee of the university’s board of governors.
However, now that the charges against him have been dropped, the professor, who subscribes to a philosophy of critical pedagogy, says he has been vindicated.
“The University of Ottawa knowingly gave the Ottawa Police incorrect information that I had no right on campus. The police then lied to apply a false charge of trespassing,” he said in a release earlier this week.
How one U.S. university avoided the great recession
School dodged “Yale model” in favour of conservative investing and a secure cash flow
The Wall Street Journal is reporting on the curious case of one U.S. university that has avoided the crushing losses to its endowment fund suffered by other schools like Harvard and Yale. (And Canadian universities, too.)
That school is the 150-year-old Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, which charges no tuition, and is headquartered in New York City’s East Village neighbourhood.
From the sounds of it, the recent financial meltdown hasn’t made much of a dent — the school has nearly finished construction on a new $150-million academic building, is hiring for a new biology program, is launching an environmental-design institute and will soon debut a master’s degree program in architecture.
More: Endowments for Dummies
Three years ago, particularly keeping in mind the tech bust and 9/11, the university’s administration decided to reduce the risks in their endowment fund. They renegotiated a property lease to ensure an steady income, sold some land, raised some money and hired some conservative investment managers. The school’s $600-million endowment has subsequently stayed about the same — and may even be up a bit at the end of the school’s fiscal year.
Those results are markedly different from schools that used what a Cooper spokesman calls the “Yale model,” in which schools eschew stocks in favour of alternative investments like private equity, commodities and timber.
In comparison, most Canadian and U.S. universities are dealing with endowment losses between 20 to 30 per cent.
For more on this story, including more information on Cooper’s high-profile land holdings, click here.
U Saskatchewan in the lead? Check your iPhone
With new iUSASK app, students will have access to marks, maps and campus webcams
Programmers at the University of Saskatchewan have designed a new iPhone application that could revolutionize how some students get their school-related information.
The iUSASK app is set to launch in August, and will allow students to check their marks, feedback from professors, campus news, maps and even search the library catalogue.
Although the program, a first at a Canadian university, still needs to be approved by smart phone manufacturer Apple, the university is aiming to have it available — for free — by the time school starts in September.
USask’s computer science department will also be the first Canadian university to offer an iPhone programming course within the year. The class will be open to students and members of the public, who will learn how to build applications for the popular smart phone.
The iUSASK application, which can also be accessed on the iPod Touch, can currently be used to check class schedules, assignment due dates, marks and other academic notifications. The university’s athletics department has a feed, as does the students’ union and the school’s learning centre. The program even has access to a real-time campus webcam.
As they continue to develop the software, the app’s programmers plan on including a real-time map, made with Google Maps, that can track a user’s location at the university.
A spokesperson for the school recently told The StarPhoenix that the programming code used in the software could ostensibly be sold to other universities. “Yes, we could make money off of the application.”
U.S. set to pioneer free online college courses
Plus, study finds that online learning beats face-to-face instruction
According to discussion drafts obtained by Inside Higher Ed, a program that would give community colleges and high schools federal funding to create free, online academic courses is currently being finalized by the Obama administration.
The plan would also “provide $9 billion over 10 years to help community colleges develop and improve programs related to preparing students for good jobs, and a $10 billion loan fund (at low or no interest) for community college facilities.”
While a formal announcement could come in the next few weeks, John White, press secretary for the federal education department says he would only discuss the program “when the time is right.”
But according to Inside Higher Ed’s Scott Jaschik, because the federal government would pay for, and subsequently own, the new courses, in addition to setting up a system to assess learning, and creating a college to coordinate these efforts, “the plan could be significant far beyond its dollars.”
“This is so spot-on in terms of what’s needed,” says Curtis Bonk, professor of instructional systems technology at Indiana University at Bloomington and author of the forthcoming novel The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education. He says the impact of bringing free online courses to those who need basic skills and job training could have much more of an impact than free courses from elite universities.
According to the draft materials obtained by Inside Higher Ed, the program would fund development of 20 to 25 “high quality” courses a year, with a mix of high school and community college courses. Preference would be given to “career oriented” courses, and they would be owned by the government and made available to U.S. schools for free.
Courses would be up for competitve selection and would be peer-reviewed, and would work on a variety of technological platforms. (For more on this story, click here.)
In more online-education-related news out of Washington, one study by the U.S. department of education has concluded that online learning has advantages over face-to-face instruction when it comes to both teaching and learning.
The study found that students who took all or part of their instruction online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through face-to-face instruction.
But don’t enroll in online-only classes just yet. The study also concluded that students who took “blended” courses, with a combination of online and face-to-face learning, did the best of all. (For more on this story, click here.)
Girls can’t wear jeans to school, say university presidents
Indian state government tells schools to ignore illegitimately issued female dress code
In Kanpur, India, the state government and a group claiming to represent the presidents of the state’s publicly funded universities are clashing over whether or not girls should be allowed to wear jeans to school.
According to Indian media outlets, Uttar Pradesh Pracharya Parishad (UPPP), a group of 22 post-secondary principals, unanimously voted to ban women from wearing jeans on campus last week, saying that the move would reduce incidents of harassment. The group also voted to ban students from bringing cell phones to school.
“It has been viewed that eve-teasers generally target girls wearing jeans or modern clothes,” said university principal Ashok Kumar Srivastava. If girls wore traditional Indian clothes, he said cases of sexual harassment near college campuses would decrease. “We can take precautionary measures to prevent the harassment of girls.”
The decision was made soon after after four girls’ schools in Kanpur prohibited students from wearing jeans, tight tops, sleeveless blouses, high heels and tight-fitting clothes on campus.
Public education officials reacted to the ban with anger, rebuking the vote as an “immature decision” and “dictatorial.” The president of one teachers’ organization said he had never heard of the group UPPP. “If there was any such body, they would at least have informed [us].”
The next day, the state government issued a warning to all local officials that the ban on wearing jeans on campus was not to be enforced. The department of higher education also demanded that any schools that had passed the bans withdraw them or face legal action. The four universities that had initially forbidden jeans on campus promptly complied.
A government spokesperson says the UPPP is not a recognized organization, and that the group was only formed approximately four months ago.
Explaining the ban on mobile phones, Srivastava said: “More than a necessity, mobile phones have become a luxury for students, and they waste much of their time talking to friends.”
Costs of deadly Wilfrid Laurier fire triple
Initially thought to be around $400,000, repairs will cost $1.2 million
Turning classic novels into “Twitterature”
College roommates rewrite Dante, Shakespeare and others ― 140 characters at a time
Did you ever feel that Hamlet was too wordy? Was Moby Dick too long?
The Chicago Tribune is reporting that someone has “found a solution” to your problems. That someone is a pair of first-year University of Chicago students who have signed a book deal with Penguin Books to rewrite 75 classic novels and plays as “Twitterature.”
Nineteen-year-old roommates Alex Aciman and Emmett Rensin will rewrite classics by Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Dante and other literary greats, and plan to do so in 20 or fewer 140-character tweets.
“Imagine if Achilles had a Twitter account and an iPhone, and he was telling his story in real time,” says Aciman, a comparative literature major from New York. “That’s what this book is going to be like.”
The students claim to have already read all the books they plan on tweeting. That is, except for the popular teen vampire novel Twilight. “A modern classic,” deadpans Rensin, a philosophy major from California.
University of Chicago literature professor W.J.T. Mitchell is backing the project. “This is exactly the kind of thing you’d expect University of Chicago students to come up with.”
What do you think? Are you horrified? Think it’s a great idea? Let us know.
First Nations University says it’s being “picked on”
Both province and feds are withholding funding from beleaguered university
Officials from the First Nations University of Canada are accusing the federal and provincial governments of being uncooperative and unnecessarily negative in their attempts to address alleged governance problems at the Saskatoon school, according to The StarPhoenix.
“The government should just get off its pot and start doing something more positive,” said faculty member Sharon Acoose in a speech to a gathered crowd of about 100 at Thursday’s open house. “Work with us. We have a beautiful university. Open your eyes and see that.”
In 2005, Morley Watson, chair of the university’s board of governors, suspended several senior administrators and allegedly seized the university’s central computers, copied the hard drive with all faculty and student records, and ordered administrative staff out of their offices.
Since that time, two different studies by both the provincial government and the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations have recommended changes to the university’s board structure in an effort to improve transparency and good governance. Enrolment at the school has plunged, and many of the faculty and administrative staff have left.
In November 2008, the Canadian Association of University teachers imposed censure on the university, which meant that most of the Canada’s university teachers have been told to refuse appointments at the university, decline invitations to speak or participate in academic conferences hosted by the university, and turn down any distinctions.
Last March, the province suspended $200,000 of funding to the school, saying that “fundamental changes” needed to be made, and the federal department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada is withholding more than $2 million for the same reason.
Those reactions are not sitting well with many of Thursday’s speakers, reports The StarPhoenix.
According to Acoose, the university is being “picked on.” She praised the work of university president Charles Pratt and vice-president of finance Al Ducharme. “Let us do our jobs. Quit holding the purse strings above our heads. We are not puppets.”
The university’s vice-president of academics Herman Michell said he agrees with Acoose.
“Sharon Acoose mentioned the struggles our university has gone through in the past four or five years. She’s right. As far as I’m concerned, we should have 50 of these First Nations universities across Canada. A lot of institutions across Canada are facing the same challenges we are,” he said.
“I call on the federal and provincial government to step up to the plate and help us do our work.”
A spokesman for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada says his department is “not going to address the comments made at the open house.” He said the funding conditions will remain, along with their late-November deadline.
Crash course in copyright law for professors
U.S. interactive guide shows how to avoid breaking copyright in class
When I went to university, there were two types of professors: those who loved using audio, video clips and pictures in their classroom slideshows, and those who stood at the front of a lecture hall and talked.
But according to Baruch College at the City University New York, some professors might not be using copyrighted material in their classes because they don’t want to break any copyright laws and are erring on the safe side. For those teachers, and those who might be unknowingly breaking the law, the university recently released their interactive guide to using multimedia in academic courses.
Riding the “copyright metro,” professors can click through various questions about the multimedia they want to use in the classroom or online, which leads the user though a maze of options and questions, along with some additional information about fair use and American copyright law.
Keep in mind, though, it’s a primer on American copyright law. For some Canadian copyright resources for profs, you can take a peek at the Canadian Education Ministers of Canada’s Copyright Matters!
This ain’t your daddy’s campus parking lot
Running late? Try the valet parking, and throw in a car wash
Some American university students will no longer have to waste their time and energy finding a parking spot for their cars on campus. That’s what the valet parking service is for.
According to this Inside Higher Ed story, Florida Atlantic University’s board of trustees is seriously considering offering valet parking, especially as enrolment grows and the amount of convenient parking at the school stays the same.
But some American universities aren’t just thinking about it. This spring, both Florida International University and Columbia University introduced valet programs, and the University of Southern California has had a similar valet service since 2008. California State University at Sacramento already has its own “premium parking program.”
Florida International says it never had any intention of making money from its arrangement with the private valet parking company, but it does get about 10 to 15 percent of the profits. The service currently costs $5 per hour or $20 per day.
But if a simple valet isn’t enough for you, what about a car wash? Florida International has that too.
What do some Florida International University students think about their valet service? Read their comments here.
Or, see what Jay Leno thinks.
UBC j-schoolers expose digital dumping ground
Team also finds a computer hard drive containing “sensitive” U.S. gov’t data
A team of journalism graduate students at the University of British Columbia may have found a computer hard-drive full of sensitive U.S. Homeland Security information in Ghana last semester, but one of those students says he doesn’t want the public to lose sight of the real story: the immoral shipping of discarded or broken electronics from North America to developing countries.
In a PBS Frontline documentary set to air tonight Tuesday at 9 p.m., the grad students, led by UBC associate professor and former 60 Minutes producer Peter Klein, follow the “shadowy” industry of electronic waste disposal from China to West Africa to India, with surprising results.
While in Ghana, a country listed by the FBI as one of the top 10 sources of global cybercrime, the students purchased five hard drives in an open-air market, according to journalism grad student Blake Sifton. The group had the drives analyzed, and while the first four were empty, the last one contained confidential information about multi-million-dollar defence contracts between the Pentagon, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and military contractor Northrop Grumman.
Responding to the students’ investigation, the FBI said it’s concerned companies such as Northrop Grumman (wrongly) think their discarded drives are wiped clean by software before being recycled. The military contractor say it’s looking into how the hardware and data ended up in the country.
But Sifton says he hopes the main point of the documentary isn’t overshadowed by the “sexy” story of misplaced U.S. security data. “The flow of electronic waste from the western world to the developing world is a very, very important story,” he says. Unless consumers are extremely careful of where their electronic waste ends up, “a small child or pregnant woman is going to be burning it to get the metal out of it.”
He says the by-products industry created by the western world’s discarded computers, televisions, cell phones and electronics is surprisingly large, and hurts both the environment and the health of locals in the developing countries where that garbage ends up. “Companies here in Canada will say, ‘Yeah, we’re going to recycle your broken or used electronics locally and safely,’ and then they put it into a shipping container and ship it to Hong Kong.”
The international reporting project was funded by a $1-million donation to the university’s journalism school from Vancouver’s Alison Lawton, a donation made on the condition that students focus on under-reported issues. For professor Klein, having that kind of monetary support was an important piece of why this story is now being told.
“One of the mantras of my class is that we don’t want to be parachute journalists,” he says. “You don’t want to have a preconceived idea about your story, and just find pictures to match.” He says this important piece of reporting is a perfect example of what a young reporter with a video camera and an entrepreneurial sense of purpose can accomplish.
“University is not the real world,” says Klein. “If you are 25, and you just graduated from journalism school, and you’re unencumbered and want to do stories, then you can do it. You can find a really cheap ticket, spend some time on the ground, report on a story and do some really interesting enterprise reporting.”
Clip from Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground:
The documentary airs June 23 on PBS’ Frontline/World’s season finale at 9 p.m. EST.
Students can’t mark each other’s assignments, says court
Prof says he used peer-to-peer marking software for three years with no complaints
According to The National Post, a University of Toronto professor who started a peer-to-peer grading system in his psychology class three years ago has been ordered to cease and desist by Ontario’s highest court.
Steve Joordens, who placed in the top 20 of TVO’s best lecturer contest last year, says he wanted his large 1,500-student first-year psychology class to write and think critically. But the course only had the budget for multiple-choice assignments that were marked by a machine.
That is, until one of his students designed software that allowed five students to mark a peer’s work then calculated an average grade. These peer-marked assignments made up 10 per cent of students’ final marks for three years, during which Joordens says he didn’t get a single complaint.
But, when it discovered the marking system, the union representing U of T’s teaching assistants and sessionals filed a grievance against the school. In January, an independent arbitrator found that the union’s collective agreement does not allow students or teaching assistants at the university to mark for professors without getting paid.
Joordens appealed that decision to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, which upheld the original decision June 8.
For his part, the professor says he hopes he can find a way to continue using the software that would be acceptable under the union’s collective agreement.
“It just seems kind of silly,” says Joordens. “It’s just like we stepped on their little piece of ground and even if we were trying to do good for everyone, they won’t have it.”
Gov’t withholds funds from First Nations University
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada imposes deadlines, demands “action plan”
According to the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, the federal government will be withholding more than $2 million from the First Nations University of Canada until the school agrees to make fundamental governance changes.
In 2005, Morley Watson, chair of the university’s board of governors, suspended several senior administrators and allegedly seized the university’s central computers, copied the hard drive with all faculty and student records, and ordered administrative staff out of their offices.
Since that time, two different studies by both the provincial government and the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations have recommended changes to the university’s board structure in an effort to improve transparency and good governance. Enrolment at the school has plunged, and many of the faculty and administrative staff have left.
In November 2008, the Canadian Association of University teachers imposed censure on the university, which meant that most of the Canada’s university teachers have been told to refuse appointments at the university, decline invitations to speak or participate in academic conferences hosted by the university, and turn down any distinctions.
Last March, the province suspended $200,000 of funding to the school, saying that “fundamental changes” needed to be made.
According to The StarPhoenix, the $2.4-million that is being held back represents one-third of all Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) funding to the university.
An INAC spokesperson says university officials must meet various deadlines in the coming months and submit a final “action plan” by Jan. 1, 2010 to trigger a release of the funds. This is the first time the federal department has placed these kinds of conditions on an institution.
Students targeted by Facebook scammers
Are you a member of a Class of 2013 group? Better make sure it’s for real
According to this story by University Affairs deputy editor Léo Charbonneau, all of those “Class of…” groups on Facebook, where students can network, plan activities and share opinions, might not all be legit.
Most universities in Canada have these types of groups. For example, a student starting at Carleton University next fall might want to join the “Carleton University Class of 2014″ before they actually step foot on campus.
But this year, Charbonneau says there have been several cases where these groups, purportedly representing students from a particular university, have been found out as fakes. In the U.S., blogger Brad Ward warned faculty at other universities that Facebook groups were being appropriated by people who had never attended, and were not set to attend, the schools.
“Think of it…posing as an incoming student. Think of the data collection,” wrote Ward. “The opportunities down the road to push affiliate links. The opportunity to appear to be an ‘Admin’ of Your School Class of 2013. The chance to message alumni down the road. The list of possibilities goes on and on and on.”
The Canadian connection to the story beings with Matthew Melnyk, the electronic outreach liaison officer at Brock University’s recruitment and liaison office. Last February, according to Charbonneau, he discovered a Facebook group pretending to represent Brock students. That group was linked to another Facebook group called “Grads of 2009 (Canada)” that had other links to fake “Class of…” websites at more than a dozen Canadian universities.
Melnyk contacted Facebook administrators, and was able to persuade them to take the Brock scam site down, citing copyright infringement on the group’s main logo. But when he met Ward on the Brock University campus, using Ward’s contacts at the social networking site, was able to convince Facebook administration to bring the whole fake Canadian network of sites down.
For more on this story, you can read Charbonneau’s account here, and Melnyk’s blog here.
OttawaU’s “solution in search of a problem”
Editorial says new anonymous tip line will create a toxic workplace for faculty
An editorial in The Ottawa Citizen has taken aim at a local university’s new anonymous tip line.
Last week, the University of Ottawa announced the launch of a new security reporting tool, called ClearView Connects, that will allow employees to anonymously report theft, fraud, vandalism and unethical behaviour, either over the phone or on the Internet.
“It is the duty of each employee to immediately report any incidents of wrong-doing related to University activities,” said a spokesperson for the school. She said the technology was just part of “good governance.”
But the editorial staff at the Citizen disagree.
“The University of Ottawa says it does not have a problem with employee misconduct, yet has created an anonymous tip line for staff to report on one another. Sounds like a classic case of a solution in search of a problem,” reads the article. “Tip lines can be abused to settle personal scores or to make life miserable for unpopular colleagues whose crime is simply that they rub people the wrong way.”
The editorial also highlights the recent furor over Queen’s University’s failed dialogue facilitator program, which intended to catch racist, homophobic, and other kinds of offensive language, after allegations that the program constituted an invasion of students’ privacy.
“The University of Ottawa tip line is different from the eccentric Queen’s proposal, but the effect on the campus community could be similar. This is an idea that would have been best left on the drawing board.”
