Nursing school sold, Ryerson continues to commodify

This week, Ryerson University announced that it has sold the naming rights of its School of Nursing. The School is Canada’s largest in the field of nursing and is now, officially, the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing.

Three years ago, Ryerson’s Senate (then Academic Council) and Board of Governors wrestled over how to re-write the University’s Academic Naming Policy. In the end, the policy stipulated that there had to be a vote within the academic unit to approve or deny the proposed name change. Ryerson’s article makes no reference to the percentage of faculty who voted in favour of the name change.

The school will be named after the mother of long-time Board of Governors representative Jack Cockwell, at a cost of $5 million.

Cockwell is a director of the right-wing C.D. Howe Institute, a think-tank and policy research group. It has produced research that promotes marketizing the public school system to allow families “greater choice” for elementary and secondary education through providing tax credits for private schools. It has also used personnel from the American Educational Policy Institute, an organisation that argues for higher tuition fees, to research strategies to properly fund graduate education, that include (unsurprisingly) higher tuition fees.

If market theory were to truly be applied to the post-secondary education system, it would not be the donors who decide on naming of Academic units. Nor would it be a faculty vote, as per Ryerson’s policy. It would be a decision of the 1405.7 students in the School of Nursing who pay well-over $9,931,000 a year in tuition fees. In fact, assuming it takes four years to graduate, these students’ contribution is seven times that of Cockwell’s one-time payout. Nevertheless, students graduating Fall 2008 will have the name of a South African nurse on their degree, only because her son makes a lot of money, and donated a small (likely tax deductible) portion of it.

The absurdity of market forces dictating how our public institutions run is most apparent when colleges and universities sell pieces of their public image, such as their programs’ names. Thanks to people like Cockwell, high tuition fees and ancillary fees are privatizing higher education. If, however, people like Cockwell really wanted to apply free market principles, then they would allow students to decide on the program name that will appear on their degree. They would also consent to more student representation on the Board of Governors and Senate and less criminalizing of student dissent as they pay such a large portion of the university's operating costs. Strangely, the more students are forced to pay, the more rights they loose. This goes to show that those calling for a market-based approach to higher education, like Cockwell, really don’t know Jack about the system.

Student debt causing doctor shortage?

The National Post recently ran the article “Student debt dictates who enters medical field” which paints a shockingly honest picture of the societal dangers of high-cost post-secondary education programs like medicine.

There is a significant body of research that points to the fact that rising tuition fees are a barrier to participation in post-secondary education. Especially problematic are the once-deregulated fees paid by students in professional programmes, (though this is not to downplay the fact that other students, like international students, are also treated like cash cows via enormous tuition fees[1] [2] or provincial health fees).

Generally, the justification for high tuition fees is that students will make their money back in reams throughout their working careers (false). Applying this logic to the field of medicine however, pushes graduates who are keen to pay off their massive student debts, to choose jobs and work locations based on pay alone.

Medical graduates are not choosing to be family practitioners despite the growing need. They are leaving rural areas and even the country for work rather than providing their much-needed service in smaller towns. To some, this is an outrage—young professional medics who have milked society for its tax dollars to get them through school and then abandoning it for more money in other jurisdictions. But the sad reality is that it was their society, influenced by the baby-boomer generation and out-of-touch politicians who chose funding continuous tax cuts with unsustainable tuition fee increases. Not to mention that this will further the cycle where only the sons daughters of doctors go on to become doctors and lawyers themselves, thereby narrowing the accessibility of the field medicine.

Until Canadian society comes to grips with the fact that funding tuition fee reductions is an important tool in strengthening society, medical professionals will continue to disappear out of desperation to live a life unsaddled by debt.

Other Links
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/documents/National_Office_Pubs/2006/Mending_Mediare.pdf
http://www.albertadoctors.org/bcm/ama/ama-website.nsf/AllDoc/74866DED8CF4801E87257103005494EF/$File/add_janfeb06.pdf
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2007/10/22/brian-day-s-diagnosis-the-president-of-the-canadian-medical-association-explains-how-to-fix-our-health-care-system.aspx

The university-military industrial complex

Jim Prentice must have been a busy man on May 16. The Minister of Industry made two separate announcements for a total of $6 million from Lockheed Martin to fund research at Dalhousie University and the University of New Brunswick. For many of us in Ontario, these announcements flew under the radar.

The funding was part of a deal for 17 C-130J Super Hercules aircraft between the Canadian government and Lockheed Martin.

Lockheed Martin is one of the world’s largest weapons, including nuclear weapons, manufacturers. According to Corpwatch.com, Lockheed’s former vice-president Bruce Jackson chaired the Coalition for the Liberation of Iraq, a bipartisan group formed to promote George Bush’s plan for war in Iraq.

Universities are public institutions that educate students through public funds. The increasing amount of private money driving research is an issue that academics and students are fighting across Canada. The increasing presence of the military on Canadian campuses is also being resisted by many students, staff and faculty.

It’s interesting that such a deal was hatched when students are not in school. Despite this, students and community members protested this announcement.

The RFP’s next issue will be taking a hard look at Canada’s media and how events are portrayed, whose voice is being heard and which opinions are ignored. Public money funding research at a public institution to further Canada’s contribution to war is a contentious issue. In order for the general public to fully understand how they’re implicated in funding Canada’s war machine, it is critical that the media makes these links. Only then will Canadians have a clear enough vision to form their opinions on Canada’s role in foreign conflict, or occupation.

GATHERING OF MOTHER EARTH PROTECTORS

Please come to this important event

GATHERING OF MOTHER EARTH PROTECTORS

Sovereignty Sleepover: Toronto, Queen's Park May 26th – May 2

Rally: Queen's Park May 26th, 5 p.m. – dusk.

Respect the right of First Nations to say no to economic exploitation and environmental destruction.
No jail for saying no.
Free Bob Lovelace

On May 26th Indigenous communities and our supporters will gather at Queen's Park to uphold our duty to protect the land, forest, water, and air and to promote respect for our Indigenous rights to say no to economic exploitation and environmental destruction. It is time to end the jailing and harassment of our people for protecting mother earth and traditional ways. Please come to our large rally on May 26th at the legislature. We are also inviting supporters to join us in four days of ceremony, speakers, workshops, music, and a three night sovereignty sleep-over directly on the front lawn of the legislature.

Right now Indigenous communities across Ontario are taking a stand to assert our right to protect our traditional territories and the future of our peoples. First Nations communities are peacefully protesting destructive industrial projects that the government is permitting on traditional lands without community consent.

Maclean's and its take on democracy

Carsen Jerema is a writer for the conservative virtual rag “Maclean’s On Campus” whose blog is focused “On education and the irrationality of university politics.” In “University Students: Ignorant, Apathetic Dolts?”, he argues that student democracy has never existed and that students’ unions are bastions of élitism. Or something…it’s hard to fully comprehend or absorb this 1100 word rant. But the notion that students’ unions are somehow anti-democratic is factually inaccurate and not fair.

Most students’ unions, by their very nature are anything but anti-democratic—elections every year, annual general meetings open to all members, faculty-based council representation, committees that are open to all members, mechanisms for rank-and-file students to call general meetings and referenda, and a membership base that includes some of the most active and concerned people in the country. Painting all students’ unions with the same anti-democratic brush is as ridiculous as labeling the Canadian University Press (CUP) or any of its member-newspapers, a threat to free speech, because they survive on students’ money and sometimes write self-gratifying articles that few people might read.

Thousands of students regularly look to their students’ union to pick up their health and dental cheques, transit passes, or handbooks (and when mishaps occur, students express their opinions). At the very least, accessing these services suggests that students do participate in their students’ unions. Voter turn-out can always be improved and the responsibility for that rests as much on elected representatives and activists, as it does on student journalists. Student journalists have a responsibility to help inform and engage their readers.

Rather than fueling the neo-conservative onslaught against the unions students have built for themselves, student journalists, bloggers and professional journalists should think about writing less cynical, more constructive editorials. The press should be critical of students’ unions.

Perhaps hope for Jarema’s reform is unrealistic. He’s the same blogger who finished an article on April 18 that says “Call me an elitist but a higher education is not a right, and nor should it be.” As most students know, anyone who writes about post-secondary education with this level of bias and disregard for the complexities of the topic should be disregarded.

Indeed, Maclean's On Campus helps to reinforce its new raison-d’être: sensationalizing complex issues, calling for the death to the public sector and the long life of a Eurocentric, neo-conservative, neo-liberal Canada.

The Year of the Student Code of Conduct

If college and university presidents had an annual dinner where they honoured the past year by naming it, 2007-08 would most certainly be the year of the Student Code of Conduct.

Of the dozens of stories written about codes of conduct, most have focused on key issues: the rights of students to engage in political discussion; surveillance of students while off school property; and the changing relationship between students and administration to one of policing by conduct officers .

Historically, disciplinary action by the college or university was limited to academic offences. Criminal matters were left to the police. The policing of students by Canadian post-secondary institutions has resulted in attacks on free speech and the criminalization of protest. The preference for discipline over dialog on campuses can be traced back to a 1998 meeting of the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services (CACUSS). The meeting themed “the First National Conference on Student Discipline” was kicked off by a keynote speech by Peggy Patterson, who believed “…student discipline provides us one of the best teaching tools there are.” At the time it may have seemed unlikely that such a conservative model of learning could make a comeback from the days of corporal punishment. Patterson’s legacy lives on, however, through the less conspicuously titled conference “Canadian Conference on Student Judicial Affairs.” It has been held annually ever since.

This past year, Brock , Trent, Ryerson, the University of Ottawa and others have all dealt with issues regarding student codes of conduct. At Ryerson, students employed drawn out negotiations in order to delay the implementation. At the University of Ottawa, this fight is ongoing.

The most recent case of a code being applied to students is at the University of Toronto, where 14 students there were arrested for protesting increasing tuition fees and a 20 percent increase in their housing fees.

At a rally against these actions at the University of Toronto today, one speaker listed off incidents from the past where student occupations won significant gains: childcare on campus and no-sweat university apparel, for example. At these occupations, far more students participated but none faced mass arrests as has recently occurred with the case of the so-called Toronto-14.

It seems that colleges and universities are following in close step with the general trend towards a Canadian surveillance state. More and more, risk-averse administrators prefer to quash debate on campus than allow an empowered student body to grapple with important issues. Nevertheless, when organized and working in solidarity with each other and other campus stakeholders, students will do more than withstand the push to police the student body. They will more likely be the catalyst for important societal changes.

However, it may get worse before it gets better. More institutions are toughening codes of conduct while already high tuition fees continue to outpace inflation by 200 percent. Perhaps we’ll soon see a “First National Conference on Crushing Student Dissent” or, a “Council of Student Conduct Officers”. And we’ll likely see some students point fingers at each other while the reals culprits sit comfortably in their leather chairs far atop the ivory tower. But it seems inevitable that as this relatively sleepy generation of students begins to wake up, realise their collective power and join together, that these student codes of conduct will become as antiquated as the corporal punishment of yesteryear. One thing you can be sure of, either way, we at the Ryerson Free Press promise to continue the important political dialog that our campuses are so keen to quash.

Students to confront environmental problems at upcoming meeting

This weekend hundreds of college and university student representatives will gather to discuss issues such as fair trade mass purchasing programs, campus anti-racism initiatives, indigenous rights and how to protect education as a right in the face of market forces. Among these themes will be also be a debate on how to further students’ role in the environmental movement.

It has been barely a year since the students’ unions that comprise the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) vaulted their organization squarely on to Canada’s environmental scene. Since then, students have concentrated their efforts to contribute to the work of the David Suzuki Foundation, the Polaris Institute, the Sierra Youth Coalition and others.

This move could not have come too soon.

Consider that Canada’s oil sand reserves, which are on par with Venezuela as the largest known supply of crude in the world, just after Saudi Arabia[1], are under increasing pressure to triple their output in the next ten years, despite being one of the “dirtiest” sources of energy on the planet.

Consider that Canada’s fresh water reserves are under increasing pressure from the US cities[2] and private bottled water companies.

If students are going to translate local campaigns such as those designed to curb driving cultureand stopping the commodification of water, they must continue their collective work at the national level.

Other Links:

The Water Front Documentary—Trailer

Official energy statistics from the US government's e Energy Information Administration—International Petroleum (Oil) Production

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[1] The US Government’s Geological Survey (USGS) says: “The two major sources of unconventional oil ... are the extra heavy oil in the Orinoco province of Venezuela and the ... tar sands in the Western Canada Basin. Taken together, these resource occurrences, in the Western Hemisphere, are approximately equal to the Identified Reserves of conventional crude oil accredited to the Middle East.” [http://www.runet.edu/~wkovarik/oil/3unconventional.html]

[2] Anderson, F. Richard, Brett Rosenberg and Judy Sheaham. 2005. National City Water Survey 2005. United States Conference of Mayors Urban Water Council. [http://www.usmayors.org/uscm/urbanwater/publications.asp].