All Posts Tagged With: "Brandon University Strike"
Want lower tuition? Ask your profs about $97,000 pensions.
Runaway compensation is hurting students
Photo by Tania Liu on Flickr
When students across the country united for the Canadian Federation of Students’ National Day of Action to protest tuition fees on Feb. 1, tiny Brandon University’s student union did their part.
They gathered students, foisted placards and yelled into a megaphone. The message was clear.
Drop fees. Drop fees. Drop fees.
It seems strange then, that last fall when the Brandon University Faculty Association went on strike for the second time in three years, the student union wasn’t so bothered about being asked to pay more for their professors— who make up most of the university’s costs.
Continue reading Want lower tuition? Ask your profs about $97,000 pensions.
How students are reacting to the strike
Occupy? Demand money back? Transfer to Winnipeg?
Student Brandon Layh helped organize Occupy the Courtyard at Brandon University
As the faculty strike at Brandon University enters its seventh week, students are frustrated. But that doesn’t mean they’ve been sitting on their hands.
For Nathan Layh, a fourth-year student in the School of Music, this is the second faculty strike that has interrupted his studies. He was there when faculty picketed for 17 days in 2008.
It’s an interruption he’s not taking lightly. Layh, along with a handful of other students, has been camped out on campus since mid-October as part of ‘Occupy the Courtyard,’ movement, hoping to raise awareness of the strike’s impact. Aside from leaving to go to work or similar obligations, Layh says five to 10 protestors have been living on the BU courtyard everyday, even in snow.
“It’s been a long month,” he said. “We didn’t expect it to go this long, we thought that both sides would see how detrimental this is to the university,” he added.
How much should professors make?
In my opinion, they’re paid well enough already.
Photo by ggbaker on Panoramio
More than 1,000 students at Brandon University have signed a petition asking for their tuition money back because of a faculty strike that caused classes to be cancelled since Oct. 12.
But the Brandon University Student’s Union (BUSU), which has collected the signatures, doesn’t blame the professors—who are striking for the second time in three years—for their three weeks of missed classes. BUSU supports the picketing profs. They agree they’re underpaid.
But are Brandon’s professors really underpaid? More importantly—are professors underpaid in general? It’s a question students and taxpayers should ask—they’re the ones who pay the bills.
