Rock administration refuses to appoint the duly chosen director of the School of Political Studies -- It's political!

Professor Christian Rouillard

The U of O School of Political Studies academic staff is outraged by the machinations of the Rock administration in refusing to appoint the duly chosen next director of the School.

The School's top administrative members have co-signed THIS OPEN LETTER (LINK) to Allan Rock (in French, dated October 5, 2015), outlining outright machinations to avoid appointing the duly selected new director.

The said duly selected candidate (92% approval within the School) just happens to be Professor Christian Rouillard, the recent president of the professor's union (2011-2015), who has been a needed bulwark against the transgressions of the Rock administration.

The Open Letter explicitly describes a litany of moves that would make Kafka uncomfortable, and expressly identifies conflicts of interest, and breaches of procedural and natural justice.

[big mess big mess - university administration misbehaving] ... nous faisons donc appel, monsieur le recteur, à votre sens de responsabilité envers notre communauté universitaire, de justice procédurale et d’équité de traitement, de respect des processus collégiaux et de la convention collective, et vous demandons d’intervenir personnellement en appuyant la solution précédemment décrite pour mettre un terme à cette situation déplorable et inutilement conflictuelle.

Rock names U of O building after mr. nobody, without broad student consultation

Allan Rock has unilaterally named the Arts Building as "Hamelin Hall", after a former rector of the university who is a nobody in terms of scholarly or societal achievements. No one has ever heard of Marcel Hamelin.

Why should the normal growth of a university, funded by the government, such as buildings and study programs, be considered an achievement of the particular rector whose well-paid job it was to oversee the administration the said growth?

More importantly, why should such an honour be decided behind closed doors, without dominant leadership from the student body?

It seems to me that students know best who or which groups of people have most contributed to personal, cultural, and intellectual advancement in society. I don't think the principal of the school is ever that person for the majority of students. Do we celebrate the entrepreneurship of a company by honouring its accountant? Never. We give the accountant a gold watch and send him off to his comfortable retirement. We honour the inventors, founders, movers and builders, not the accountants that manage public resources.

Were are the students? Were are the staff? Why does Mr. Rock so disrespect and discount the academic community?

Extension of Allan Rock’s mandate to 2016

News Releases & Announcements

Extension of Allan Rock’s mandate as President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ottawa

OTTAWA, May 29, 2012 — The Board of Governors of the University of Ottawa is pleased to announce that Allan Rock’s mandate as President and Vice-Chancellor of the University has been extended. The decision was made at the Board’s May 28, 2012 meeting, following a broad consultation with members of the University community. The Board adopted Mr. Rock’s proposal that his mandate be extended until June 30, 2016.

Appointed in July 2008, Allan Rock has guided the University through a period of change and modernization. Under his leadership, the University has focused on improving the student experience, strengthening bilingualism, intensifying research activity and expanding its international links, while modernizing its internal governance structures.

“The Board of Governors is confident that Allan Rock will continue to provide strong leadership as we meet future challenges and implement our strategic plan, Destination 20/20,” said Robert Giroux, Chair of the Board of Governors.

“I am simply delighted to have the opportunity to continue the important work that is now well underway,” said Allan Rock. “I am grateful to members of the Board for their continued confidence. I look forward to working with our outstanding leadership team, as we reach towards the ambitious goals we have set for Canada’s university.”

Allan Rock is the 29th President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ottawa. A graduate of the University’s Faculty of Law, he practised in Toronto for two decades, becoming one of Canada’s leading trial lawyers. He subsequently spent ten years in Parliament, where he occupied senior cabinet portfolios, including attorney general of Canada, minister of health and minister of industry. He left Parliament to serve a term as Canadian ambassador to the United Nations. He joined the University in 2008.

About the University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa is the largest bilingual university in the world, where it is possible for students to study in English, in French, or in both languages. Located in the capital of Canada, a G8 nation, we have ready access to the great institutions of our country. Our breakthroughs in health, science, social sciences and the humanities attract global attention, reflecting our ranking among Canada’s top 10 research universities and our ongoing drive to discover.

U of O arbitrary deadline on harassment policy repudiated

And again... Once again all the unions and associations of students and professional workers at the University of Ottawa have judged it necessary to call the university administration on one of its half-baked and ill-motivated plans...

See the letter posted on the Student's Eye View blog: LETTER HERE.

The letter is signed by eight unions and associations representing all the university community members except the executive officers.

It says:

Stop imposing arbitrary deadlines without reason which harm the democratic collegial governance process of the university. Back off and take a deep breath and tell us that you will actually have a fair and open process...

Will the administrative culture of "Canada's university" be perturbed by yet another reasoned request for reason?

Degree inflation and lost collegial governance at U of O in full swing

The June 6, 2011, meeting of university senate at the University of Ottawa was remarkable in so many ways. Here are a few.

After a rather lengthy discussion on a motion about whether a correct degree program name in French should be "computer science" or "computer sciences" (plural), the dean of the Faculty of Science, Andre E. Lalonde, boldly displayed independent thinking by being one of only four to abstain from approving the singular version.

Following this and another equally important matter, there was the item of approving yet another two-for-one degree scheme. This one would provide the lucky tuition payer and job-equipped student with both a graduate degree in law (LLM) and a Ph.D. in science (physics was used as the discussion example).

Law professor John Currie had serious reservations and expressed that this plan had never been presented to law professors or to Law Faculty Council or department counsels.

This led student senator Joseph Hickey to state that collegial governance had not been followed. Acting chair of senate Francois Houle countered that collegial governance had been followed because the administration's rules allowed this non-consultation (wow!).

Dean of graduate studies Gary Slater chimed in that the deans of law had approved this and that the (unelected, administration-appointed) deans "represent" the faculty.

Not a single professor rose to the occasion to explaining what the legal term "collegial governance" actually means. Unbelievable.

Collegial governance is on a par with academic freedom as a foundational principle of the modern university in democratic societies and has statutory meaning thanks to decades of labour law precedents and international agreements yet not a single brilliant academic at senate on June 6, 2011, seemed to have any notion of what it means or any problem with completely disregarding it.

The only time collegial governance rights can be constrained is if the collegial body, via the full collegial process, formally agrees by policy to allow the administration to administer some component of collegial governance. The precedents are clear on this point.

It gets better.

Currie explained his reservations, while being apologetic that this might frustrate the administration's efforts.

Currie pointed out that this would be a new scenario in which a student would get a graduate degree in law (with crash courses and without writing a law thesis or research paper) without having an undergraduate degree in law. Currie questioned the value of this LLM compared to real LLM degrees that require an undergraduate law degree and a law research component.

Law professor Currie further pointed out that this would degrade the in-class learning environment where the real LLM students would share classes with the crash-course LLM students having no previous law credentials.

To this Lalonde answered that these new LLM students would be few in number such that the negative impact on the classroom should be minimal, apparently oblivious to the accepted pedagogical fact that a single unprepared student in a class represents a significant operational difficulty for all.

At this point student senator Hickey characterized the plan as "degree inflation". As soon as Hickey uttered these words, Houle cut him off and the motion was tabled until faculty councils could provide their inputs.

There is an obvious (and stated at Senate) push for degree inflation as a way of providing competitive consumer goods to a paying student population eager to dress their CVs for the work market.

Grades inflation was a way to increase student numbers over the last decade and more and these increases were crassly explained and questioned at senate (by biology professor David Currie, quoting previous president Gilles Patry) as the best way to increase the university's income "in order to provide better services for the minority French students"... (quotes as emphasis).

With the help of ace academic architect Slater, degree inflation (e.g., see the remarkable case of the Brand Israel two-for-one LLMs) is now in full swing at "Canada's university", for the usual corporate executive motive of increasing income and size. Size matters to this institution. Nothing else it appears?

Will the collegial body ever wake up?