VPUA Report for BUSAC, January 19, 2010

Welcome to the first report of 2010!

CASA

Things are mostly quiet on the CASA front right now. There are a few regular meetings of the Policy Committee and the sub-committee on International Branch Campuses, which I chair, but there has not been too much activity to report about the organization from during the holiday period.

At the federal level, however, the government has decided to cut funding to the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL). This, along with the loss of the Canadian Policy Research Networks (CPRN), and the end of the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, means that there are no more independent non-profit research bodies left in the higher education sector in Canada. Certainly, some research will continue to be done by StatsCan, by CASA and the partnership, the CFS, and private firms such as EPI, but this is a huge blow the PSE sector. Only research into our own system, methods and performances will allow us to improve as a nation and develop a stronger and better education sectors in an increasingly competitive world.

OUSA

Steering Committee met on January 8th in Toronto for our regular monthly meeting. OUSA is developing a pledge on teaching quality, which we hope can be adopted by individual universities, providing a commitment to the protection and growth of quality in these times of budget cuts. I have also put forth BUSU’s name for the pre-budget consultations when the committee travels to Niagara Falls, and other OUSA schools have done the same in their local areas, with the Home Office hoping for one of the Toronto meetings.

The organization is on track for 4 policies for General Assembly this spring, along with two policy updates. I have not been tasked with any of these this semester, but will be helping with supporting research on many of the topics. OUSA does now, however have a full set of operating, financial, and HR policies.

More can be found in the section about Blue Chair in this report.

Academic Issues

I have been working on two main academic issues since the last BUSAC. The first is the Brock Travel Policy, which I may have mentioned in previous reports. This is something that the university is developing for all trips which involve students who travel for any academic purposes, and faculty/staff who travel for job-related functions. This is not a policy which BUSU would be subject to, however it involves a significant number of students who would be on co-ops, internships, conferences, even field trips. I have shared my thoughts on this draft with the appropriate departments, and I believe that versions will be coming to senate soon.

The second issue I have been working on is with respect to “pop assignments.” I would classify these as being one where the professor has the ability to walk in at the start of class one day, and assign a paper/project that is due within 48 hours. A restriction on the ability to assign these would not prevent take-home exams, or anything else where a due date is known well in advance and presented in the syllabus, but is simply intended to protect students from surprise assignments when they may be scheduled to work, babysit, or have other commitments one evening and have no reasonable chance of finishing an assignment. Alex has been doing some work for me regarding how other universities treat this issue, and I am currently awaiting response from the committee of Deans about where progress will go next.

24-hour space/Student Lounge Space

The 24-hour space in the Kenmore Centre during exams was a huge success. The number of people self-reporting their attendance in the ballot box became so overwhelming that I had to stop tracking all users, to focus only on those who used the space overnight. Our total count of self-reported overnight users was 99 people during exams, with an expectation that more people used it but did not bother to report. This bodes very well for the argument that many people would use such a space if it were offered consistently, and I will be working with the university for more permanent solutions.

One of those solutions may be the creation of a brand new student lounge which could become 24 hours once it is renovated. I don’t want to identify the space yet in case it does not work out, but there is a department that is moving elsewhere in the university and vacating space near the middle of campus, in an area which we believe could be reasonably converted into a secure location. I have been asked for, and delivered, a formal proposal to turn this area into a student lounge, and am awaiting responses from the administration about how we can proceed.

Executive Retreat

Chris, Nazir and the executive took 5 days to get away from the distractions of St. Catharines and have a planning retreat moving forward for the second semester. Much of our work focused on the upcoming (now passed) Frost Week, as well as the BUSU budget, divisional budgets, HR and staffing through the second semester, transitions, longer-term directions moving forward from BUSU, and a sort of stop-and-reset for the year to refresh us for the new term.

Blue Chair Campaign
So, why are there some blue chairs around the campus, you ask? Well, this is the third year of OUSA’s Blue Chair campaign. The empty blue chair represents the potential of a student who is qualified to attend university, but cannot attend due to barriers placed in their way, or not removed from their way. The different OUSA member schools then take this theme and use it on their own campuses to promote what OUSA does, and some aspect of our lobbying agenda.

This year at Brock, we are focusing on OSAP, and a number of problems with that program. Beginning with how it doesn’t fully fund what it assesses a student’s need to be, frozen loan maximums for the last four years, overestimating parental contributions, insufficient part-time job and personal savings exemptions, underestimating food and textbooks and more, there are a number of issues which OUSA has presented to the government in our submission for the next multi-year plan for how to fix the OSAP program. We are asking for students to sign our petition to the government to fix the OSAP program, as well as recording your thoughts on video for combination and presentation with the other OUSA member schools.

Make sure you stop by the OUSA displays in the hallway to sign the petition, grab a fortune cookie, and if you’re lucky enough, you might even find free food around the school and win other great prizes.

Other

There have been a number of other activities I’ve spent time on, most of them revolve around preparation and planning. Frost Week and Blue Chair week both took up significant time for me. I’ve begun writing my transition manual for the next VPUA, and of course preparing as I run the ‘Yes’ side in the Fees Replacement Referendum.

I also held one lobby-ish meeting. One of the upcoming federal election candidates for the next election approached me to discuss their party’s ideas for post-secondary education, and I prepared a four-page document for them about their party’s previous election platform, CASA’s current priorities, and some other BUSU issues. Of course, with parliament currently prorogued until March, we will not see an election until exams at the earliest, but all parties are preparing their platforms for what may happen after the throne speech and budget.

News from Across the Country

College Professors in Ontario

The college professors held a vote last Wednesday on whether to give their union a strike mandate. Across the province, about 57% of them voted in favour of giving that strike mandate. This does not necessarily mean a strike will be forthcoming, as this gives their union a little more bargaining leverage, but it is now possible. At least five days notice must be given, and the union has indicated that nothing will happen until at least February, but we may see a large strike in the college system at one of the worst times – when a very large number of people have recently been laid off and are returning to school on government-supported job retraining.

University of Alberta Students’ Union

The President of UASU has resigned his job for personal reasons. This leaves the other four executives scrambling to fill the work of five people for the rest of the year.

University of Victoria Student Society/Camosun College Student Society/ Alma Matter Society at UBC

Over in British Columbia, the CCSS recently sent aside $3000 to petition on behalf of the CFS during the upcoming referendum on the campus of University of Victoria, about whether UVSS should remain members of CFS. The petition to defederate was not driven from within the current UVSS executive but by other organized students on campus. The CCSS claims that the student unions have a sibling-like relationship, and remaining with the CFS is in the best interest of both unions. A UVSS motion to “enact a policy of disapproval towards external financial interference” and “respectfully requesting [the CCSS] to end all financial allocations to the campaign” was ultimately defeated by the council, following debate where the tone was that student unions should not be in the position of telling other student unions what to do.

Ironically, at the exact same meeting, the very same UVSS council voted to send a letter to the AMS at UBC asking them to re-submit their human rights complaint to the United Nations (I mentioned this story in my last report). Don’t like telling other student unions what to do?.....you be the judge.


VPUA Job Tip of the Week

Tip #8 – Make a difference where you can, when you can. (It’s a long one)

So, we’re now into election season. The next BUSAC meeting following this one will be during the election period, so I’m carefully timing this “job tip”. This job tip is inspired by one of my Candidate’s Cafe slides, and this “tip” straddles that fuzzy grey line between my experiences, and my hopes for future candidates. But because nobody can release a platform yet, I’m ruling this tip as “fair game” as a result of what I truly believe about how this position operates, and it’s something I think is applicable to candidates in all positions.

There are a number of very overt and obvious student wishes. We’d like to see lower tuition, more grants, better university funding, smaller classes, buses every 5 minutes, and more. Heck, I would love a monorail direct to downtown, a direct phone line to the Premier, and a bridge over Lake Ontario to cut the commuting time for our GTA students. And if you asked 1000 students, 90% or more would agree with every single one of these things. But we don’t live in a perfect world with unlimited funding, and zero consequences. If you make these things the centerpieces of your platform, you won’t be able to deliver on them.

Let me explain. Because they’re so overt and obvious, student leaders across this country have been talking about them and asking various levels of government about them for years (well, maybe not my monorail, bridge or phone line. But the others for sure). That’s over 120 student unions. Over 500 student leaders. Every single year. For at least the past two decades. That’s 10,000 people. Please do not try and convince your electorate that you have some magic power, special skill, or power of persuasion that 10,000 leaders before you did not have. You cannot “try harder”, “work longer”, or “do better” than 10,000 people before you in achieving these objectives. Very smart people have come before you, very smart people will come after you. If the time and stars align, we may partially achieve some of those things, but I guarantee that you alone do not have any brand-new-never-before-heard idea that will solve every problem in education. Especially because most, if not all, of these issues require bags of money that governments simply don’t have. I’m not saying don’t try for these things, and if you have the opportunity, please do. But don’t make “lower tuition” the centerpiece of your election campaign when it’s something that you truly cannot deliver.

Instead, please focus on the ideas that you can accomplish. If you’ve identified methods that could be improved. If you’ve identified needs and gaps that can be filled. Structural deficiencies, holes to patch, resources to give, efficiencies to find. You’re more likely to be able to solve “problems” within the university, than within “the system”, but don’t let that stop you from dreaming. Tell your constituents what you plan to lobby for, but don’t stick to the same old ideas that anybody could think of with 5 minutes of brainstorming. Use that creative thinking to come up with solutions to the problems our student face on a regular basis.

If you have solutions that involve money, provide full solutions. When you’re trying to convince people to do something, it’s a lot easier if you can show full benefits, potential for monetary savings, and impacts. When I walk into lobby meetings, especially this year, the first question I always get is “where should this money come from”. Know how you want to answer that question, and why your project is better than the one you’re finding the money with. Our university is in debt. Our province is in debt. Our country is in debt. Nobody has rolls of cash to throw at you, but there are ways you can make a difference. To point to just one that was tackled this year and is ongoing – 24 hour space. It had an extremely minimal cost, yet makes a huge difference for someone who needs quiet space on campus during exams.

The job is hard, convincing people is harder. But if you want this job, be prepared to work with others. Contrary to what many believe, there are very few people who set out to “screw students”. People work in universities because they believe in the power of them, including making and moulding better students. If given the right motivation and rationales, you can accomplish a whole lot.

But I promise you. If you come into this job and spend your first five months talking about nothing but lower tuition, you’ll get a pat on the head from every politician and every administrator, and they’ll just wait. Their term lasts longer than yours does. They’ll implement their own plan anyway, and just wait for the next VPUA to come along and give them real, achievable solutions. So make yours count, for the benefit of the students at Brock.

Closing Lyric of the BUSAC

“There’s something good
Waiting down this road
I’m picking up
Whatever is mine”
- Tom Petty