Review of Administration’s Response

After reading and analyzing the administration’s counter-website, I have to describe it by one word – disappointing. I’d give them an “A” for effort, though beyond that I wouldn’t substitute their grade for even what I have in French right now.

The moment you click on it, it jumps out at you as more of the same sterile hogwash they have been trying to pour down our throats in their statements to The Cord in the past – “We care about our students and we’re trying to do the best we can to resolve this situation.” Some sentences seem to be recycled from the stock mass e-mail they have been shooting out to anyone who dared to even e-mail in a valid concern. Further they make no effort of trying to address the real issues that concern students – our tuition, our grades, and our profs in exchange to simply shoot off noise in full apathy of the issues that trouble us.

Once you get deeper into their website you encounter the sort of loopy, closed-circuit logic you might hear on the Fox News channel if you’re a fan of painful American television. It’s the sort of logic that only makes sense if you’re running on six shots of whiskey at two o’clock in the morning. It even claims to provide “factually-based information” – an echo to Fox News that offers such fair and balanced news that they have to remind you of that fact before and after every commercial break.

Their website contains a massive contradiction – their claims to the value of the CAS workforce butt up against in how little care they actually show about their input by stating how their job is basically delineated to be mere plugs in helping “the university meet unexpected increases in demand for particular courses and/or programs.” This is exactly what one of the problems WLUFA has with the administration – the use (and abuse) of a flexible workforce to fill in the holes that might arise without due compensation and while providing not a thought to their job security by freely admitting that their applications won’t be considered until the very last moment without seniority. Maybe they should be honest and admit that they value the CAS primarily for the amount of money they save them. If anything, the level of value the administration places on its CAS workforce is about the same as the value the Chinese military places on its foot soldiers.

With this, they also overlook how the CAS do not “reduced teaching loads” of the full time faculty, but in fact enhance them by forcing them to serve more time on hiring committees for the CAS labour force due to their unwieldy system of seniority. They overlook the extra burden their money-saving scheme places on full-time faculty.

Another contradiction arises when they fully agree that there are many CAS who are recently-graduated Ph.D.s and academics looking to get into full-time positions (who also sit on committees) while claiming that their role and responsibility is 100% teaching. It is impossible to get a full-timed position without the service on committees and the research, which the administration seems to deny that many CAS even do, let alone supply them with time and research grants while freely accepting the benefits that comes from their research. While being hopeful and open to CAS seeking full-timed position, they wilfully deny them the tools to achieve so. While claiming that their job is 100% teaching, they also offer (a pitiful) amount to help with their research. This is hypocrisy in action. Even with their closed-circuit logic, the 100% teaching idea fails to account for the research needed to keep classes fresh with updated information of the developments in that particular subject area – a key point in keeping Laurier’s education competitive.

Further, they overlook many key tidbits in these negotiations – like, despite the wish for 33% of the Laurier faculty to be CAS, 65% of the communication studies department is staffed by part-timers. They make no notice on how they can address that. They also repeat their claim on the “standing offer” of meeting to bargain more often with the CAS negotiating team – a noble offer, even though through the history of these negotiations they have been incompetent in their bargaining (case and point – it look them two hours to prepare with the conciliator last Friday) and they fail to acknowledge that the CAS team is busy conducting their lives as full-time instructors, even though they fail to admit that too.

Finally, the biggest insult to the intelligence of an average student comes from their chart comparing salaries of Laurier and other universities. To starters, they’re using data of the 2006-2007 year – last time I checked we were living in 2008. For a real comparison, we must think that other universities are paying now and will be paying in the future in order to stay competitive – there’s no point in using old data to argue your point. Then, they fail to add the HCSA and other benefits to the total summary while freely adding on the 4% they fork over to the CAS right now. Then, they list distant (or brand new) universities like Trent or Nipissing with whom Laurier does not need to compete since they are too far for commuting travel. Then, they (deliberately?) ignore UW and how, for just a fifteen-minute walk, it offers their profs 700 dollars more at least (in the arts) for teaching the same stuff or how their grad students make more than our Ph.D. profs – the numbers are listed on their faculty association’s website. Finally – they neither list nor provide links to other benefits like job security, office space, large class subsidies, professional reimbursement, research grants, tuition benefits, and etc. that are offered at other universities; which is simply disingenuous when you’re trying to make a valid comparison between Laurier and other universities. Lastly – they ignore the real issue at stake of people trying to make a living, especially when doing all the things full-time faculty are doing while getting paid almost half as much.

Are you furious at them, yet?

As I said, this ploy by the administration is petty in its attempt to catch up to the information victory we and WLUFA achieved in the past weeks. Their hollow words do not address the key student concerns nor offer valid arguments for why should they continue to treat the part-timers like they have been. It’s a shameless ploy that only displays the disconnection they have with the concerns of the average student. It is the faculty that has been upfront to talk to us about it through these negotiations especially when Herbert Pimlott, the Media Relations executive of WLUFA, sacrificed his lunch break to eloquently address our concerns in the concourse on Friday. No administrator has done that, not with this website, not in the concourse, not through sacrificing a lunch break for mere students. By their respective actions, I think we see who is more honourable and deserving of our full support in these negotiations.