Remember THIS October 27, 2009, promise from our president about the "donor recognition policy" that was to be?
Following a series of show panels personally organized and hosted by Allan Rock, there was to be... the promise went... :
"Diane Davidson, our Vice-President, Governance, will be preparing a draft policy and sending it out for consultation and reactions in the weeks to come. We will be looking for your opinion and suggestions, so that we can develop and adopt a policy that is in the best interests of the University."(LINK)
Well that never happened.
Instead, on October 28, 2009, in the student paper there was THIS.
And that seemed to kill Mr. Rock's enthusiasm for community consultation about donors because then what followed was administratum silence for a long long time...
It was so silent that everyone assumed that there was no administratum movement on the corporatization front. Indeed, an informal UofOWatch survey has revealed that 100% of respondents believe to this day that there is no U of O "donor recognition policy".
Well you're wrong.
Physics graduate student and member of university senate Joseph Hickey was informed today (by Allan Rock) after persistent inquiry that there actually is a policy of the president's promise, although Rock could not name it or say where it was on the internet.
And so we sifted through all the policies HERE and we found it!
It's not called "donor". It's called "Policy 100: Policy on naming of university assets". It was enacted in May 2010, just prior to the announcement of this little June 2010 anonymous donation HERE.
And that happened without any of the (see above) "a draft policy and sending it out for consultation and reactions in the weeks to come. We will be looking for your opinion and suggestions, so that we can develop and adopt a policy that is in the best interests of the University."
Does "sending it out" mean by letter to a few deans? Out where? Did it go "out" to the 40,000 students or to the 5,000 staff? Did it go to the alumni? Where was "out"? Where did the institution's first "donor policy" draft go?
So... when de boss man says he's gonna do sometin and dats why he's doin all dees public panels and den doesn't do it is dat a lie? But he does it kinda but like real quite like, no fuss, no press release, no Rock Talk blog post, no posting to the web front page, no adds, no mention in the campus papers, no nottin... just in time for a suspicious "anonymous" donation... is dat "transparent"?
See cause on his blog he said "How can the [donor policy] decision-making process be made transparent, so that the outcome is broadly supported?" like he wanted all this to be "transparent".
We'll we at UofOWatch are not experts but it seems to us that one way to make it "transparent" would be to make it transparent. Mr. Rock: Transparent does not mean having rules. It means being able to see how the rules are being followed. Think of it like a courtroom hearing... get it?
U of O community members will be surprised (!) to note that Policy 100 does not have a word about donation ethics, nor does it discuss any criteria for safeguarding the institution's publicly financed "academic freedom". It also says nothing about protecting the image and reputation of the institution by guarding against donations from donors whose activities have not been consistent with the statutory "Christian values" of the University of Ottawa Act, 1965.
Policy 100: A donor policy that is a Rock farce.
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