U of O Watch mission, in the words of Foucault...

"One knows … that the university and in a general way, all teaching systems, which appear simply to disseminate knowledge, are made to maintain a certain social class in power; and to exclude the instruments of power of another social class. … It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticise and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them." -- Foucault, debating Chomsky, 1971.

U of O Watch mission, in the words of Socrates...

"An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all." -- Socrates

video of president allan rock at work

Monday, September 26, 2011

Student demands $7,110.68 per year salary for work on university senate - Canada's university


An obvious case of discrimination...

Pay equity for students at the University of Ottawa...

Collegial governance has a price...

Joseph Hickey wants $7,110.68 per year and back pay now.

Here is the link:

4 comments:

Steve E. Noble said...

I suspect that the Admin in its usual lack of ethics will say that the student senator took the job knowing the working conditions and so must accept that. That kind of sleaze occurred to me in my teaching contract around "over teaching" (teaching 8 courses per year when the Faculty of Education load is 5) over 3 years. The Academy is all about cheap or free labour - except of course for old (tenured) profs and administration, who receive bloated salaries and perks. I hope things can change and a student rep can actually receive market compensation for engaging in free labour (under the pretense of calling it "experience"). Can one imagine how much a university would actually have to pay ALL faculty and support staff their actual market salaries instead of contract labour rates sans benefits? I'm finding university increasingly the biggest scam going with regard to its free and contract labour abuses - even with labour unions supposedly protecting workers. Many corporations are now operating with greater equity, enlightenment and sensitivity than many "enlightened" universities. One can see this lack from the utter void of dissension coming from among faculty (especially tenured) and support staff ranks. I've given up on anything to do with Academia simply because what it espouses is not close to the pervasive abusive practices upon those with the least power (students, contract workers, contract faculty)....

Wilfrid said...

By your logic (Mr. Hickey, Mr. Noble, and Mr. Rancourt), any student should also be paid for publishing a dissertation in a refereed academic journal, n'est-ce pas? Indeed, your "entitlement" argument is based on the fact that roughly one third of a professor's work is administrative in nature, and that they are paid for this.

Denis Rancourt said...

@Wilfred who prefers to not use his full name:

Faculty of science graduate students (such as Mr. Hickey) already get paid for their dissertation research work - it's called a research stipend and it's guaranteed on signing the acceptance contract.

Nobody, not even professors, get paid for publishing research articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Faculty of science graduate students (such as Mr. Hickey) also separately get paid for their teaching (TA) work, and are unionized under CUPE for this component.

Also, 20% is "roughly" one fifth, not "roughly one third" as you seem to believe.

Anonymous said...

So let me get this straight, Rancourt: instead of eliminating the flawed concept of "representative" democracy altogether and replacing it with an anarchic system of governance that is "direct" democracy in that each member has a direct say in governance (instead of having to go through Hickey), you want to instead strengthen the current system and just make sure that everyone gets to participate in the hegemonic process equally. Seems to me you haven't really thought much about what anarchy really means.