RSU boad members removed from RSU office by security

Tonight is the January board meeting of the Ryerson Students’ Union. While the meeting itself is sure to be something to watch, events from this past Friday warrant a post.

On Friday, RSU board members Abdul Snobar and Osman Hamid were removed by security from the office of executive director of operations and services, Mike Verticchio. For at least half an hour until they were removed, the pair yelled at staff and executive members accusing them all of corruption.

Once removed by security, Snobar went to the hall to keep yelling at Toby Whitfied, vice-president of finance as security looked on. Hamid sat on a couch adjacent to the executive director of operatons and services’ office staring at it until 7:00 pm (the event started at around 2:00 pm).

Snobar later expressed his concerns in an email sent to the Eyeopener, the Ryersonian, RSU staff and the RSU Board of Directors. While Snobar failed to mention the altercation, he claimed that the RSU is “almost bankrupt” and took issue with how Whitfield and Verticchio were undertaking a request for proposals (RFP) for the health and dental plan.

Claiming bankruptcy not only smacks of political opportunism, it’s also inaccurate. Snobar himself supported a budget that was passed only two months ago. While it did forecast a $6000 deficit, it hardly indicated that the RSU is close to bankruptcy (they receive an annual injection of membership dues and revenue). There is also an unqualified audit waiting to be received by the board. Due to filibustering and agenda amendments at the Semi-Annual General Meeting (SAGM), the audit was pushed too far down the agenda to be considered before quorum was lost.

Snobar’s other claim is that the RFP for next year’s health and dental plan contract is corrupt. He argued that because Hamid or he hadn’t been contacted about an RFP for a health plan, the vice-president of finance and the president must be hiding something.

However, at the RSU’s SAGM, students were clear about who should be responsible for an RFP related to the health and dental plan contract. The motion,

“BE IT RESOLVED THAT the signing officers of the Students’ Union be directed to solicit bids from interested parties through a tendering process before a health and dental plan contract can be signed”

was passed by the membership specifically directing the president, vice-president of finance and executive director of operations and services to begin the process (as they are the signing officers). No where is it mentioned that they were to include Snobar or Hamid (or anyone else) in the process. As a motion passed at the SAGM, by the general membership of the RSU, this has more power than a decision of the board, and certainly more power than a decision of two or three directors.

The story of the health and dental RFP hardly warrants the kind of aggressive behaviour toward staff and executive members that was exhibited, but is more of the same from the hot-headed young Snobar.

With the election looming, it is likely that these antics will continue to escalate as each side tries to convince students of their superiority. The RFP will keep close watch and try to update on these issues as they occur.

Post-Doctoral Fellows: a new frontier for cheap university labour

While students, workers and supporters are watching for improved working conditions at York, another group of workers is quietly suffering on university campuses.

Post-doctoral researchers are like faculty members: they have received their doctorates (PhDs) and conduct high-level research in their fields of expertise. But they have none of the benefits that are afforded to faculty members. Ryerson’s post-doctoral fellow population is approximately 80 and is growing rapidly.

Recently, two unnamed tenure-track faculty members have constructed a website to document the problems facing post-docs in Canada. The authors are anonymous, citing concern of potential reprisals from their current universities for what they have to say about the unfair treatment of post-docs. They draw their expertise from their “ordeals” as post-docs at the University of Toronto and McGill. There are about 500 post-docs working at McGill and between 1,800 and 2,500 at the University of Toronto.

In their website, the authors focus on the injustices faced by foreign and domestic post-docs, poor benefits, the difficulty of starting young families, the question of status (student vs. employee), and post-docs’ unsustainable pay. According to University of Toronto documents, base pay for U of T post-docs is a meager $28,000 despite working hours of 50, even 60 hours a week. In addition to this, stories abound of post-docs being forced to pay for their own travel and accommodations to research conferences. And for the insulting icing on the cake, there is a new move afoot to charge post-docs training fees in order to—get this—classify them as students.

It appears that the University of Toronto is trying to conjure up the image that post-doctoral fellows are in fact students in a training program. This is to try and fool the Canadian Revenue Agency into thinking post-docs are students and therefore eligible for T2202As. They are playing to post-docs’ hopes that their wages will not face income-tax—an unlikely scenario considering the CRA just issued a statement instructing universities, including the U of T, to issue proper income-tax paperwork to post-docs.

But maybe this isn’t the real reason that the U of T and others are interested in labeling post-docs as trainees (students). More people are becoming worried that in the pursuit of more money, universities will start to look for more revenue generating units (tuition fee-paying students). Post-docs at the University of Toronto (excluding those at affiliate research institutions like hospitals) will be forced to cough up $200 this year, which could generate nearly half a million dollars. With no regulations on these fees, they could grow rapidly after their introduction.

There is a growing and strong opposition to the introduction of these fees. CUPE 3902, the union representing a handful of teaching post-docs (and thousands of other instructors) has included the removal of a ‘training’ fee in current contract negotiations. CUPE 3902 at the U of T is trying to negotiate better supplemental job opportunities like teaching.

Foreign workers are especially exposed to the harsh realities of post-doc positions and require special attention. If universities like the U of T are successful implementing their student/trainee post-doctoral model, foreign post-docs could loose their access to public healthcare. Many may also experience bureaucratic turmoil because of inconsistencies that such a change in designation would cause with their current work visas.

CUPE 3902’s negotiations are strong evidence that unionization would stop this cash-grab and other consequences that a student label could lead to. Post-doctoral fellows in Ontario universities should follow the path of their counterparts at McMaster, Western and the University of California to seek the protection of a union. This is the only way to guarantee their status as workers and to effectively bargain for better contracts in the future. Otherwise, post-doctoral fellows will find themselves as another exploited source of cheap and highly-educated academic labourers.

Rising tuition fees are a myth? Maclean’s needs to check its facts.

Maclean’s has done it again.

Controversial title? Check. Factual errors? Check. Hyperbolic statements that expose bias? Check. Citing the Educational Policy Institute (EPI), a right-wing think tank, as the leading voice on post-secondary education in Canada? Check.

Karen Pinchin’s piece “Rising tuition? It’s a myth,” hits all the elements needed to be fit to print on the Maclean’s Online education blog.

Rather than a being a piece about a report written by the EPI and its views on tuition fees and funding, the article reads like it was commissioned by the EPI itself. It takes the report of the EPI pretty much as gospel. With the exception of a few obligatory paragraphs to a BC-based critic, the 1,800-plus word homage to the EPI is a slap in the face of the vast majority of people who support lower tuition fees.

To digest this wordy piece, one must first overlook the embarrassing error in the first paragraph (“Nationwide, thousands rallied, demanding protection from what everyone knows are skyrocketing tuition fees.”—unless Pinchin considers Ontario and Manitoba a nation, November 5 was only a province-wide day of action in those provinces).One must also overlook the fact that the subject of this piece, “a new report by Canada’s only higher education think tank” could only be considered new in the cosmic sense—the report was penned months ago. But these details are only fodder for journalist-types who care about minor facts. Let’s delve into the real issues.

Pinchin makes no mention of who funds the EPI. Here’s a list of the clients and funders that pay into EPI Canada:

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
Human Resources and Skills Development Canada
Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC)
Council on Post-Secondary Education (COPSE)
Government of Ontario
Government of New Brunswick
Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation

…hardly a list of agencies that can even pretend to be neutral on the subject. It’s no wonder the EPI keeps producing biased studies, which help its funders make their case that tuition fees can go higher.

The bio of the author, Alex Usher, also sheds light on another potential source of bias. His former employers include: the Association of Universities and Colleges, Canada, Council of Ministers of Education, Canada, the Government of Canada and the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation. Each of these organizations have very specific policy that is pro-higher tuition fees.

Usher was also the first national director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA), a group that is known to have been started with the help of the Federal Liberal Party[*] to oppose legitimate calls by students to stop downloading costs of college and universities onto students. Unsurprisingly, CASA still avoids tuition fees as an issue in its campaigns.

In Pinchin’s piece, our favourite line from Usher is: “ ‘By any reasonable measure, education is a lot more affordable now here than it was 10 years ago’. ” Here’s a reasonable measure, how about the upfront cost? Here’s another: rising cost of student debt? And maybe one more: public opinion? Whether or not these are the best measures are irrelevant to Usher’s statement: they are all reasonable and all would refute Usher’s essay.

Pinchin also repeats Usher’s claim that in Ontario, “net tuition” has only risen by two percent since 2000. She doesn’t explain how Usher calculated “net tuition,” nor does she mention that, according to Statistics Canada, the percentage change in undergraduate tuition fees for Ontarian full-time students was 4.7, this year alone. For any reputable media outlet, it would be normal to cite StatsCan in a story like this, but Pichin somehow forgets to double-check Usher’s story. Further probing could have revealed many other studies which paint an extremely different picture.

Maclean’s’ ability to dress up their editorial bias as news stories should not cease to amaze or fool anyone. Pinchin’s article should not be considered news any more than Usher’s piece should be considered unbiased research.

At the very least, this article, and the report on which it was based, should be considered opinion. The report’s use is limited to demonstrating the perspective of the EPI’s funders and clients. On second thought, it may also be useful as fuel for the fire the next time students decide to camp outside in a ‘Freeze for the Fees’ event.

[*] Greenspon, Edward and Wilson-Smith, Anthony 1996, Double Vision: The inside story of the Liberals in power, Doubleday, Toronto.

Decembuary Issue On Stands in T-23h

For everyone on campus who is fed up with exams, the December/January issue of the RFP will be on stands tomorrow afternoon! That's right, you'll be able to bring it home for the holidays and read every page of our 40-page monster issue.

If you're interested in contributing, there will be a writers meeting in the new year. Or, contact ryersonfreepress@gmail.com.

Happy reading!!

“Don’t worry, be happy” decrees Lakehead student union president

Lakehead student union president Richard Longtin, defied reason recently with his decree that clubs and campaigns “must be positive in nature.”

His decree reads:

“Campaigns must be positive in nature and cannot slander the opposing stance of the campaign.”
“All club publications shall not have content that may be deemed as offensive or in bad taste to any identifiable group.”
“Members of the club are not allowed to impose belief(s) or practice(s) of the club to anyone who does not give them consent to outside of the club’s meetings.”

In addition, the National Post reports that Longtin interprets the motion as going further, believing that it should prevent students from approaching others with information or campaign material.

As reported in the National Post, Longtin justified the move like this: “For example, he said the campus NDP club could put literature about why the NDP is the best political party without disparaging the Liberals or Conservatives. There is no point, he said, for one party to attack another.”

Given the current call for unity among the NDP and Liberals, it’s unlikely that they’ll be attacking each other. On the other hand, as a known campus Conservative himself, Longtin may be trying to use his role as president to quell concerns about the Conservative’s move to suspend Parliament in order to avoid a confidence vote that they were poised to lose.

Whatever the motivation, his attempts to lull the campus into a Prozac state of positivity undermines the basic mandate of post-secondary education.

A solution to undoing this may be to show that Longtin’s decree is out of order by testing it against some of LUSU’s pre-existing “negative” bylaws, like presidential impeachment.

"Will you be a lousy scab/Or will you be a man?" This past semester: a semester of strikes

The academic year of 2008-09 could very well turn out to be the ‘Year of the Strike.” At the University of Windsor, the faculty association was on strike for the first few weeks of the school year. Over the last several weeks, contract staff at York have been on strike, which has effectively shut down the university, with the exception of the Law school and the Business school which have recently reopened.

Labour issues for the year will probably not stop here. Labour unions at Carleton, the University of Toronto and Guelph are all calling for reasonable improvements: fair wages, job security and for some, a common expiry date of collective agreements. Each of these situations could result in strike.

At York, rather than hearing out the union’s representatives, the administration immediately called for binding arbitration. This is approach is not only expensive, but is usually reserved to be a last resort after negotiations break down.

And, rather than support the striking workers, many of whom are students, the local student newspaper the Excalibur has decided to take aim at the local student representatives and the union. Instead of focusing on students’ reaction to the strike, the Excalibur uses the strike as a back-drop to attack York Federation of Students President Hamid Osman.

While going after progressive student union representatives might make for a juicier story, the Excalibur is effectively siding with the administration. In this game, it’s students and staff who suffer. Why waste time trying to sew divisions among the student body? Instead the Excalibur should be calling for the administration to negotiate a fair contract and the strike can end.

It is a disservice of the Excalibur to ignore the core issues. The chronic underfunding of colleges and universities has lead to the labour strife across the sector. But somehow media generally has left this untouched. Nowhere is there any analysis or even mention of these problems. It’s no wonder that CUPE Ontario has been steadily working toward coordinated bargaining.

Not only has the student media let students down, but so too have so-called student “leaders” like Trevor Mayoh from the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (which represents none of the students’ unions at York, or anywhere near York). Recently he declared that CUPE’s goal of coordinating the expiration of collective agreements across the sector would give staff too much power, so much that he told Elizabeth Church at the Globe and Mail that he wouldn’t feel comfortable.

University administrators pretty much have a monopoly on power at our colleges and universities. To think that giving some of that power to any other stakeholder at an institution would be somehow dangerous is absurd.

The media and regressive student 'leaders' need to take a step back and re-evaluate what this struggle is really about.

Students and workers would do much better to have a greater say in the affairs of their institution. They would also have a much better chance of being heard if all contract staff at every institution could threaten to shut down the sector if their demands are ignored.

Contract staff spend time in classrooms with students. Administrators do not. Contract staff often have no guarantee of employment, are paid menial wages, and fulfill the mandate of an institution on a very basic level. Most administrators are paid well-over $100,000 a year, have great contracts and, even if fired, have a severance packages that would make the average person drool.

People who choose to teach and who choose to not climb an administrative ladder are important and special to the students they teach. All students, all elected student officials AND the campus press need to step back and see the real battle here. The Ryerson Free Press knows which side it’s on, which side are you on?

RSU: Three Ring Circus

The on-going divisiveness of a slim majority of RSU directors is leading to some of the most outrageous times ever experienced by the RSU. Once a proud and strong student advocate and service provider, recent antics of directors is enough to lose faith of the average student and the RSU is dangerously close to alienating the students it represents.

Some examples:

First, the annual budget process was stalled by four months. Eventually, a budget was rammed through, but it failed to reflect the RSU’s actual financial location. For example, the new budget cut the Anti-War campaign line item to zero. However, at that point, the RSU had already used financial resources on anti-war campaigns as per its back-up budget, (last year’s budget).

The list of problems with the budget continues, despite being moved by a business faculty director (Chandan Sharma) and supported by other business faculty directors. It should certainly be the hope that this isn’t the kind of fiscal prudence being taught at the Ryerson business school. Indeed, the problem is likely acute, resting with the bull-headed Ryevolutionaires at the board.

A second example is the debacle at the Senate meeting, which has already been written about. You can find it here.

Third, Abdul Snobar served a motion this week to sign a year-long contract with Gallivan and Associates (G&A), the broker for the RSU’s health and dental plan. G&A is most notable for having sued the RSU a few years back, and hiking its rates by almost $100 in only four years. G&A has steered RSU’s plan to be the most expensive in Toronto. Rather taking the financially prudent approach tendering the plan, Snobar’s motion sought to skip right to re-signing with G&A before taking other bids. Stopping the tendering process for an insurance plan makes about as much sense as buying the first used car that you’re offered at the first lot you find.

The most recent evidence of the RSU's decent into the absurd happened on Wednesday night. Ryvolutionary board members moved to install a new chair—Snobar’s brother, former business student and failed RSU presidential candidate Abe. Somehow, the Snobars thought they could side-step Abe Snobar’s defeat during last year’s elections and sneak him in the back door as board chair.

Moreover, any attempt to appear impartial—as a chair must be during a decision-making meeting—was thrown out the window when Abe was caught overtly organizing with his brother and other Ryevolution directors to get himself installed. The motion to install the senior Snobar as Chair failed, so as per the bylaws, the job fell to his election adversary, current RSU President Muhammad Ali Jabbar.

After all this excitement, what's next for the RSU board of directors? Surely exams and less frustrating activities must be taking over aspects of board members' lives.

The Ryerson Free Press’ November edition will be on the stands next week. You'll be able to read about all of the above in more detail among the pages of the paper. Until then, if you're a concerned student, you should email the board of directors (bod@rsuonline.ca) and tell them to stop this fraternal block from confusing and stalling the business of the RSU any further.