This site is devoted to transparency at the University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada. UofOWatch exposes institutional behaviour that is not consistent with the public good.
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
Showing posts with label student politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label student politics. Show all posts
Like the time Allan Rock lost his nerve with student Marc Kelly and yelled at him like a crazed university president...: HERE. (Marc had a recorder in his pocket.)
Or the time the Faculty of Science decided it needed hyper security against student walk-in inquiries...: HERE.
The establishment, not so very long ago, had a healthy fear of juveniles. In the 1950s:
A thousand conferences, agencies, committees, and newspapers alerted the country [USA] to the danger. Juvenile delinquency was the only rebellion around, and it had to be stopped.
Articles on teenage delinquency gushed forth. Experts labelled it a "national epidemic," projecting some two and a half million cases. "Unless this cancer is checked early enough," warned one popular book, 1,000,000 Delinqints (1955), "it can go on spreading and contaminate many good cells in our society.... [1]
Although politicians called for it, there was no purge like there was against Communism [2], only a tightening of civil and institutional controls, including city-wide curfews. But the genie was out of the bottle due to changing economic reality and modern technology:
The greater access to money and especially to automobiles, which allowed the young to escape watchful parents, fostered their identities as individuals with specific sexual, musical, and consuming needs. [3]
However, the first modern juvenile revolution did not occur until newly populated campuses exploded in the 1960s. The students rejected being treated like owned children, while being drafted for war.
The students revolted, walked out, demonstrated, and squatted without relenting. They obtained:
independence over their personal lives (no oversight of off-campus activities, no curfews, no discipline for non-academic matters)
the right to unionize and collectively own buildings and businesses on campus
respect of their power when it came to imposing a military draft
minority representation on all university committees (including the Senate and Board)
These were lasting victories of a true and bloody [4] juvenile revolution.
While the revolt vehemently and explicitly expressed a desire to be free from the clutches of true legal power over the institution (which resides in the Board), as in Mario Savio's iconic speeches
the furthest success in that direction was to obtain representation on university "governance" committees, which is no small accomplishment if the representatives impose themselves rather than allow themselves to be co-opted tokens.
But the 1960s achievements of partial democracy and partial student liberation in the institution were perceived as threatening and have been systematically eroded by the concerted efforts of establishment forces.
The counter-revolution was already well underway by 1975 when the Trilateral Commission, founded by David Rockefeller in 1973, published The Crisis of Democracy: On the Governability of Democracies. The report recommended restructuring public institutions to address the identified threat stemming from "an excess of democracy". They knew how to fix that...
What followed, starting in the 1980s, was a catastrophe on the scale of a macro-economic and macro-societal restructuring:
Reversal of The New Deal and of post-WWII middle-class access to economic independence,
gutting of professional independence of teachers,
gutting of tenure (replacement by contract staff),
complete corporate alignment of the university mission,
codification and confinement of radicalism within allowed "justice and equity" programs,
student-debt slavery extended far into post-studies life,
tighter ideological processing in all the professional programs, and new imposed programs for journalists, etc.,
totally institutionalized childhoods including after-school activities,
more grading and performance evaluations than you can shake a stick at,
more surveillance than in any novel about a dystopia,
being fired for comments on social media at every corner,
etc.
... the list of post-1970s abuses that most citizens actually celebrate and defend is a long one. All of the "99%" (non-elite) suffered the same fate, to varying degrees.
As a result, more than ever these days, all school pupils are literally in a prison, with locked doors, yard time, prison guards, and parental home visits. College and university students have no time to think, but instead are on a brutal and meaningless treadmill, with periodic PowerPoint torture [5], while being shackled with financial debt, rather than being paid for their labour [6].
What has kept the lid on USA juveniles (except in Canada's province of Quebec, to some extent)? What has stalled the next US-Canada-Europe... juvenile rebellion?
Several factors have contributed, as I see it.
First, juveniles are seriously constrained and corralled in every aspect of their lives, but that alone is not normally enough to suppress vital instincts.
Second, the state, like any police state, is vicious in attacking and punishing student dissidents with police-induced judicial consequences, augmented by punitive measures applied by the educational institutions themselves. This is a strategy to kill any spontaneous or planned emergence of rebellion.
Third, many students themselves have been largely neutralized in their brains, to be seekers of justice fairly provided to them by the very system that imprisons them, to seek "being oppressed fairly". A mass of students has essentially been zombiefied by the poison of the "radical" "justice and equity" programs, anchored in "critical theory" "at the service of the design of a better society". They have swallowed the myth that liberation is establishment-regulated participation in the design of a "just society".
Fourth, in a divide-and-conquer attack against the mind, students have been turned against each other with manufactured hyper-concern for their own religions, skin colours, genders, sexual preferences, and superficial "privileges", rather than recognizing the common enemy of an oppressive establishment that eats them alive, irrespective of their individual attributes.
Ageism is a unifying psycho-social force that channels a juvenile rebellion against the systemic oppression of youth. There is ageism, but it is presently used as a strategy for survival, rather than a force for rebellion. Ageism and inter-generational solidarity with trusted agents and coalitions with trusted cells are not opposites in a juvenile revolution. The former is visceral motivation while the latter are strategic choices. [7]
Fifth, and possibly most importantly, juveniles are both drugged by their parents and self-medicated to escape and "perform".
The pharmaceutical industry for drugs that optimize the shoolability of children is massive. These potent mood-altering drugs are widely prescribed against the symptoms of repressed childhood (so-called attention deficit disorder, etc.), and are now frequently marketed as "smart drugs". These are the Ritalins, etc., known as nootropics. Nootropics have spawned a pervasive black market among juveniles forced into "performance" work and are widespread among students. [8]
The self-medication to escape meaninglessness and powerlessness is both from substances and from technologically enabled stimulation (personal music devices, social media, communication technology). Much of the needed identity management is authentically communicative, such as YouTube testimonials, status posts, and tweets, and is often supplemented by face to face continuations.
In addition, there is a significant pot culture of escape. While pot (like all drugs) is a helpful personal exploration tool, it is also frequently primarily used to escape the brutal world by creating a safe space, and simply to dull the pain of being violated by the institutions of "education".
Thus, there are many effective avenues of personal identity management that allow long-term survival. The mental space is self-managed away from the visceral impulse of authentic rebellion. This is combined with the fact that students are still able to physically escape the institution, both in separate physical spaces, which can be as small as a student apartment, and via their computer and phone screens in the classroom or elsewhere.
Sixth, although the school and university environments are brutally dehumanizing, in terms of institutional obedience-training and indoctrination, they are also accompanied by a constant brainwashing that the student has merit and high status by virtue of being in school, and that the student has entered a privileged club whose members experience fulfillment and meaning. And, within each program, there is "choice", which some students reason to themselves allows them to personalize their experience.
Seventh, the media and institutional spaces are actively cleansed of any eminent examples of successful rebellions, and of the personal rewards of authentic rebellion. Teachers and professionals are harshly prosecuted for anything that could resemble "corrupting the youth". Instead, professional status and military service are portrayed as providing the ultimate personal rewards.
The May 1968 message "Sous les pavés, la plage!" is both absent and written in a very foreign language. There are no teachers writing re-mixes of the 1969 "the little red schoolbook". You cannot even utter the "N-word", let alone assign unconstrained reading of the 1967 essay "The Student as Nigger" [9].
At my own recent binding arbitration into my 2009 dismissal from my tenured full professorship of more than two decades, after I had been critical of the administration and created a popular activism course which had to be given in the largest auditorium on campus, the hired university lawyers spent the majority of their efforts to argue the propositions that I incited students to violence, had incited students to bonfire the campus at UBC via an invited talk, had connections to fire-bombing domestic terrorists, had publicly called the president a "douchebag", etc., etc. [10], with such "exhibits" as the fact that one of the clips in one of my YouTube-channel playlists is this one, which, for no other reason, was played during the arbitration hearing:
The anarchist video is an example of fringe-culture rebellion connected to anti-globalization demonstrations, not an example of campus rebellion against institutional suppression of student lives.
Eighth, the constant and overbearing propaganda that there are mega-threats to humanity, including global warming, potential health epidemics, etc., that require dedicated collaboration with the establishment and its scientists. Add the threats from "foreign invaders", and homegrown "terrorism", etc. All such research and propaganda also serves US corporate and geopolitical interests. Institutions and governments do not work against themselves, ever. [11][12]
For all these reasons (first to eighth, above), therefore, so far, there has not been a new juvenile revolution against student slavery. You can't even use the word "slavery" because that would be "misappropriation", blah blah blah.
But it is slavery, just as wage-slavery is slavery, and its damage is deep and lasting (see [6]). And as with any slavery, there is a large psychological barrier against recognizing the slavery. Every slave has invested into the system and identifies with the system. To reject slavery would be to vaporize one's identity and could induce massive grief at the prospect of having lost one's past life.
So, will the student-slaves ever revolt again? Will there be another mass juvenile revolution?
I believe it is inevitable. There are constant sparks, and the gasoline of human suppression is just under the corporate facade. Institutional totalitarianism is advancing at a furious pace. The war economy of global exploitation has endless needs... Rebellions are emerging all over the "developing world", and new geopolitical blocs (e.g., BRICS) are emerging that challenge US domination, which breaks the isolation and forces some moderation both abroad and at home.
At any moment, the sight of beach sand from under the broken pavement could cause a frenzy. There could result real physical solidarity against the targeting of the most daring, the emergence of vision, and the organization of a committed juvenile front.
This can only work if the next juvenile revolution goes significantly beyond the juvenile revolution of the 1960s, beyond minority representation on committees, and on towards true power to run the institutions of juvenile imprisonment and make them into institutions for and by juveniles. Students are workers in the economy and must, as a start, be fairly paid for their labour (see [6]), as the first transitional demand.
Never mind tuition, students must be salaried. If society wants juveniles to do the hard work of learning skills, because society wants those skills, then a living wage is an immediate prerequisite. This was understood in the Middle-Ages but has been "forgotten". Youth cannot be used as a pretext to exploit and capture.
Children were taken from factory wage-slavery and put into factory schools. Now juveniles accumulate debt for the "privilege" of being molded into service professionals.
Sooner or later, there will be the next juvenile revolution, and university president salaries will drop. Students will fire and choose their teachers, and will decide what needs to be learned. They will learn how to make all the most important decisions about their own lives, by the practice of making those decisions. And they will learn how to make and re-create powerful institutions made in their liberated image rather than controlled by outside occupiers.
Endnotes
[1] Jacoby, Russell, The Last Intellectuals, 1987 (2000 edition, Basic Books), p. 63
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
[3] The Last Intellectuals, p. 64
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
[5] Rancourt, Denis G., "On the sacred space of the university classroom", Activist Teacher, October 3, 2009, http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2009/10/on-sacred-space-of-university-classroom.html
[6] Rancourt, Denis G., "Adult Students Please Get Real", Dissident Voice, April 27, 2015, http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/04/adult-students-please-get-real/
[7] The same is true of racism in racial liberation struggles, and of violence in struggles to survive attempted genocides. See: Rancourt, Denis G., Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism, Stairway Press, 2013. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_and_Free_Expression_in_the_Fight_Against_Racism
[8] For example, this 2009 5 O'Clock Train - CHUO 89.1 FM investigative radio interview: "Upper Year Psychology Students on School, Deadlines, Medication and How to Survive University", December 3, 2009 show: http://trainradio.blogspot.ca/2009/12/upper-year-psychology-students-on.html
[9] Farber, Jerry, "The Student as Nigger", 1967, first published in the Los Angeles Free Press. Canadian Union of Students re-publication: http://www.studentunion.ca/cfs/1968/1968-cus-student-as-nigger.pdf
[10] A transcript of the lengthy hearing is fascinating and was published by a former student who attended the proceedings: Cover-article-LINK, Transcript-LINK. The emails of a hired student spy to the university executives, explaining her use of false cyber-identities and covert machinations are most instructive: Spy-emails-LINK.
[11] Rancourt, Denis G., "Climate Stupidity and Human Survival", Dissident Voice, May 26, 2015, http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/05/climate-stupidity-and-human-survival/
[12] In particular, carbon politics is domination geopolitics. The US is
branding itself as "the clean-energy superpower", including at the recent G7
parade. Next it will continue to attempt to strangle and extort the
energy development of the emerging BRICS global economy, using a
combination of green blackmail rhetoric, global carbon-economy monetary
instruments, military posturing, covert and direct targeted nation
destruction, and sanctions. And, of course, the same folks always suffer the destructive
consequences of these global economic instruments that purport to be
intended to "save the planet": The Carbon Rush documentary film trailer.
Student conference held on the U of O campus makes its point. Are university administrations hearing this? Where is the official forum that would have heard the students? Will resources be allocated for student-lead initiatives?
Now, leaving hockey players aside for a moment, do powerful executives ever participate in rape culture? It seems to me that the student politicians could also focus on obtaining a policy with teeth that admits that the problem can lie with deans, VPs, and presidents, rather than effectively treat the highest echelons as beyond reproach and beyond any real accountability regarding complaints, except when Allan Rock decides to throw one under the bus.
Any such policy without real and apparent teeth at the top will only serve to widen the gap between students and the top executives, and between university employees and their bosses.
Here (below) is a video look at the need to include transparency and accountability at the highest levels when it comes to rape culture. How can rape culture be changed if we condone blindness to the institution's dominance hierarchy?
Will there be transparency regarding the content and frequency of the training provided to deans? Will there be special training for VPs and the President? Will we know what that training or education consists in? Who will have the gravitas to provide that training? Will there be a final exam and grades to ensure certification?
Getting serious about rape culture must include a horizontal policy field that corrects for hierarchical power.
On October 17, 2014, the Student Rights Centre of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa distributed flyers at an administration's propaganda event to attract new students.
The flyer was entitled "Top 5 reasons not to attend the University of Ottawa".
Reason-5 on the flyer is:
The upper administration does not respect the recommendations of the University's impartial and independent assessor, the ombudsperson. In a recent investigation where she deemed there to be a "grave injustice against a student", the administration has refused to remedy the situation.
In March 2014, Allan Rock was directly called out by student groups for covering up a real issue rather than authentically admitting and addressing it. The issue was evidence of a rape culture at the University of Ottawa. (LINK-CBC-video-report)
The students claimed that Rock was window dressing, smoothing over, spin doctoring, diverting away from actual consultation using a hand-picked committee, ..., instead of admitting reality and calling on the community to come together to compare notes and solutions.
His only actual action was to wrongheadedly and summarily dismiss and shun of an entire hockey team. (LINK)
OTTAWA,
March 1,
2014 —
The University of
Ottawa is appalled by the recent online dialogue about Anne-Marie Roy,
President of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa.
uOttawa President Allan Rock spoke with SFUO President Roy directly
on Friday to offer the University’s support and committed to work with
her to develop an appropriate response.
“The comments demonstrate attitudes about women and sexual aggression
that have no place on campus, or anywhere else in Canadian society”
said Mr. Rock. “The University will work with our student President to
ensure the situation is addressed properly.”
The University of Ottawa is committed to maintaining a campus that
promotes respect for the dignity of every individual and a University
community that is free from sexual harassment and discrimination.
Allan Rock has stepped-in to "work with her" to "develop an appropriate response", and to "ensure the situation is addressed properly".
“The comments demonstrate attitudes about women and sexual aggression
that have no place on campus, or anywhere else in Canadian society”
said Mr. Rock.
***
There appears to be no consideration given to the fact that this was a private exchange that was made public against the will of the participants, and that a large public mobbing ensued, which caused irreparable damage to four elected student representatives, who are being burned as witches that practice "rape culture". And Allan Rock wants to be seen as providing the stage. (media links)
If we start using extracted private exchanges (i) as a measure of success in our social engineering endeavors, and (ii) to identify those worthy of punishment and banishment, then we are headed straight into a totalitarian nightmare.
Your staging, Mr. Rock, does not address the root of the problem, and only drives us further down the wrong path. Open dialogue, without the fear of crippling material and status punishments, is what is needed, combined with less institutional oppression of the students all-round (who are bored to death by meaningless demands, and who dare not try to have a say).
Generating fear of expression and of having bad thoughts only makes things worst Mr. Rock. It is a mess you could have helped defuse but instead you joined and encouraged the mob. U of O is developing mobbing as the ultimate social betterment tool, under your enlightened leadership. What a mess.
It's not an election with branding points to be made Mr. Rock. It's a campus for learning. Is that so difficult to understand? You can't fight "rape culture" with campaigns and threats. You have to speak to the hearts of men. D - I - A - L - O - G - U - E.
Video reports about the recent student action to shut down a meeting of the Board of Governors (BOG) of the University of Ottawa are HERE, and HERE.
This student action was so lame. Let me explain how and why it was lame.
The "action" is solely a complaint, nothing more. Students were passively asking to be oppressed fairly. There was no hint of wanting to take over to better manage the institution. There was no offense in the tactic. Instead, it was purely a complaint about the quantum of fees.
Meanwhile administrative costs and executive globalization projects are skyrocketing...
Hey students! Here is a hint: Make a graph of total executive and executive support staff salaries (on the y axis) versus time (on the x-axis), for the last 15 years or so. Express y as a fraction of the total operating budget if you like, to account for student population and overall budget growth. Oh, and get your own numbers, not any spin from the corporate spin doctors.
Have you noticed the growth of the media relations and communications offices in recent decades...? Or just look at the president's salary for the last 20 years... That's quite a historic break!
Now I know that most of you are only around for 4 years or so, but you can research what happened before you arrived...
Corperatization and globalization are not solely about vanity buildings and brand name coffee. They are about the institution being taken over by corporate and global interests and being run by those interests. This includes:
the massive drives to recruit foreign students paying large tuition fees (diploma mill economics)
the president's trips around the globe (notice how he's always out when something happens?)
top-down academic exchange programs with Israel (why Israel?)
"responsibility to protect" talks on campus (whose ideology?)
the institution's image propaganda machine (resource allocation for brand maintenance...)
technology and buildings being more important than quality teaching (do you like Power Point?)
blotted salaries of upper tier research professors (do the math)
poverty wages for everyone else (temp staff, undergraduate students)
loss of participatory collegial governance (you don't even know what that is, right?)
centralized control of all resource allocations (try getting a room for a student event...)
centralized control of all messaging (try putting up a poster)
costs of centralized control...
skyrocketing institutional legal fees (discontent students and employees sue... more lawsuits and grievances than you can count)
The list goes on.
If professors were made responsible to educate or took that responsibility, instead of being buried in or hiding behind their high-paying assembly line jobs, then you could have an education at a small fraction of the present cost, if you cared to take it.
And, um, did you consider that you are adults being forced to finance your productive work for society...? I mean does that ever cross your mind, that if you are going to be institutionalized into forced work, then you should at least be salaried?
Negotiate a salary, and impose student governance leverage on the actual management of the outfit. Grow up.
How a disgruntled physics student could get this far against another physics student using the graduate student union is, well, difficult to understand. Are the GSAED Council members eager to participate in mindless mobbing and why?
We might conclude that the brilliant administration of the university has inspired high quality student governance. Oiyoiyoi.
UofOWatch contacted uoLeaks in order to obtain this interview that was completed today.
(1) What is uoLeaks? Who is it? When did you start the blog?
uoLeaks is a website designed to bring accountability and transparency to the SFUO by allowing students to anonymously submit tips and comment on events and details that have been posted. The blog was started in February 2011, during the election period.
(2) What motivated you to start a disclosure blog about the SFUO? What were the key catalysts?
The past few years have been riddled with scandals, lawsuits, and a continuing growth of discontent. One of the major catalysts was the fraud and irregularities behind the SFUO elections this past year.
(3) What do you hope to accomplish? Why do this?
Knowledge. We hope that the students at the U of O become aware of what the SFUO is doing and take action. Another goal was to get people talking about the SFUO and news/rumours surrounding it, not just being a source of fact (that's for newspapers to do) but also getting people to think about rumours and to make their own opinions on it.
(4) Why do you insist on being anonymous? Would it not be more effective to be completely transparent and public about your concerns and efforts?
The anonymity allows students that send in tips and comments to have a risk-free way of providing information that may otherwise have them fired or punished.
(5) Regarding anonymity, what is the worst that you could suffer in terms of reprisals?
For some of us - there is no risk of reprisal. For others, their jobs.
(6) What has been your main scoop or disclosure or emphasis to date?
There hasn't necessarily been one main scoop. Instead, there has been many smaller stories. Everything from SFUO's lawyer's documents to irregular financial expenditures to breaches of contract has been disclosed.
(7) How do you gauge your support in the student population and what degree of support do you believe you might enjoy if more students were aware of your efforts and motives?
Overwhelming support was seen in the referendums for the Federated Bodies to leave the SFUO. Three or four student bodies held votes to see if the students wished to be disassociated with the SFUO, and the results ranged from 70-95% in favour of leaving. The support is not necessarily for uoLeaks, but for more accountability within the SFUO; there were also protests and lock-outs at the SFUO office that further showed this.
(8) How do you plan to get the word out that you exist and to create a buzz about your role on campus?
During the election period, we used a set of volunteers not associated with the blog to spread business cards around the crowded areas of campus and in election campaigning areas. To help, we've integrated Facebook and Twitter posts for each time a new post goes up on the blog.
(9) What are some issues or areas you plan to focus on in the coming academic year?
Progress. In what direction is the SFUO going? Has there been improvements or not?
(10) in your opinion, how did the SFUO develop such contempt for transparency and democracy? How does that work? How can you help get it back on track?
There is no one for the SFUO to be accountable to. The "board", which is the only power above them, consists mostly of themselves and (to be frank) their friends. The board directors, elected each year, have no accountability to the students who voted them in. There is no process of appeal, as the Student Arbitration Committee (SAC) has not existed for quite some time.
(11) The university administration loves the SFUO to be petty and ineffective. What role do you consider you have regarding the relationship between the SFUO and the Rock administration?
If we can show overwhelming support and demand for change, neither the SFUO nor administration can ignore that. At a time when the university is seeking increased enrollment, a poor reputation of student experience is the last thing that is needed.
(12) Leaving the SFUO aside for a moment, what would you say are the main problems with the university administration's conduct and outlook?
Although our mandate requests accountability from the SFUO and administration, we have not had much (if any) focus on the university administration to date.
UofOWatch has learned that this letter (below) was duly sent (in cc) for publication to the student paper The Fulcrum on March 26, 2011, and was simply ignored. The Fulcrum did not acknowledge or contact its author, despite the paper's statutory commitment to publish all student letters. This, for a paper that has been consistently enthusiastic to criticize the SFUO's Left politics.
It appears that at the University of Ottawa racism runs deep and crosses all race, political, age, and class boundaries...? (See all posts about racism at U of O HERE.)
UofOWatch has learned that the letter was re-sent today addressed to the present SFUO president Amalia Savva.
To Tyler Steeves,
I am writing to you as the Chair of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa's Black History Month sub-committee in your capacity as President of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa (SFUO).
It is with sincere regret and utter frustration that I find myself writing this letter. As a committee, we experienced a lot of resistance from the executive of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa. We also felt as if we were being held hostage and that we had to dance to a tune in order to be heard and taken seriously.
As a representative of the committee, I first approached the SFUO in July with the plan to put certain things in motion. I had a meeting with an executive member and the response from the meeting was an email advising me that the SFUO would be "selecting members" for the 2010-2011 Black History Month Committee. This response perplexed some students who were interested in being members because we did not understand them criteria that was to be used. We also questioned the SFUO's qualifications in determining who was suitable to be on this committee. What made this response even more curious for us was the fact that for centuries marginalized groups have always been told who has the legitimacy to speak on their behalf by the dominant group.
According to the SFUO Constitution, "the SFUO Executive shall only act as a liaison between the Black History Month Committee members for financial and logistical matters". There were a few embarrassing moments that were avoidable had the SFUO executive followed their mandate as stated in the Constitution vis à vis the Black History Committee. The most embarrassing and regrettable one was suffered by our keynote speaker Dr. George Dei of Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), as he tried to check out of his hotel room.
It was also embarrassing to have to hold our event at the Carlton University Campus because of the delay in mobilizing the committee. This delay was due to SFUO's inaction in terms of setting up the committee and lack of facilitation in accessing all the resources required by the committee. The committee was also puzzled by the lack of attendance by any of the SFUO executive members.
We all have to acknowledge that the committee is seen by outsiders as representing the University of Ottawa's student body. As such any failure by the committee is seen as a failure by the whole student body. We have to work together to promote an inclusive and respectful study body at our university. The committee would like to set up a meeting with the SFUO executive to revisit the issue and come up with a more respectful working relationship.
I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.
Kindest Regards,
Hazel Gashoka Chair, Student Federation of the University of Ottawa's Black History Month sub-committee
cc: Black history month committee members, SFUO executives, the fulcrum, and black caucus members
It happened this year at the University of Ottawa, "Canada's university".
A clique of anti-oppression-trained student union executives and officers changed the rules to replace an elected student union vice-president by one of their own.
The mess was reported in Macleans On Campus in March 2011 HERE.
The move was similar to retracting a score-wise unambiguous hockey victory on the basis of post-game re-evaluated body-checking penalties using the league owners' reevaluation while barring the referee board's traditional role, thereby disallowing any mechanism for appeal.
Except that this was not a hockey game. It was a democratic election.
In our democracy only consequentially fraudulent elections can lead to retracting election results (and a new election!). Broken rules lead to reprimands, fines, controls and other penalties; and the candidate and those involved are answerable to the electorate.
It is a sign of our times that students -- less corrupted by lengthy accommodation to society's hierarchical dominance -- can behave in this way, be blind to the obvious fundamental violation of principle, and actively defend their attack against democracy.
There is little hope that this student union executive will be able to even perceive the despotism of the university administration?
According to the Student Appeals Centre (SAC) of the Student Federation at the University of Ottawa (SFUO), scholarship math-physics undergraduate student and published scientific author Marc Kelly is being persecuted by the Rock administration as reprisal for “having spoken out and for having ultimately taken his grievances to President Rock” – see SAC WEB POST HERE.
The repression is reported to be severe, involving several concocted criminal charges and a total banishment from campus. Trial dates are set for January 2010. The student is being prevented from attending a required course in his study program this semester; for which the University allowed him to register but then collaborated with the Crown and Ottawa Police to continue the campus ban.
The suggestion appears to be that this outrageous situation (which is at odds with the United Nations UNESCO Recommendations on academic freedom) is reprisal in part for a bold and embattled student’s attempt to speak with President Allan Rock after months of unanswered attempts to be heard about mistreatment by a professor in a physics course – all the way up the chain from the professor, to the departmental chairman, to the vice-dean academic, to the dean of the faculty, to the VP-academic, to the president's office (after many emails)…
Fortunately, the student had a voice recorder on his person so that the President’s vehement and intimidating verbal abuse could be documented and exposed. Marc Kelly posted the voice recording on his UofOVoice blog:
At 11:53AM graduate student in law Mireille Gervais wrote an open letter demanding that former VP and dean of the Faculty of Law (University of Ottawa) Bruce Feldthusen retract his statements recently reported in the media. See Gervais’ email below. .. At 3:01PM Feldthusen made a public retraction. See Feldthusen’s email below. .. Feldthusen appears to be claiming that he provided his opinion on current legal practice to a reporter without inquiring or being informed about the context of the reporter’s interest. The reporter would have then concocted the piece that clearly has Feldthusen commenting on the violent rape case in question: LINK to media article. .. It appears that either Feldhusen is misrepresenting his interview with the reporter or that the reporter (Ottawa Citizen, CanWest) is rather creative in her transmission of the facts: “Much of the university's statement of defence is standard legal language, said Bruce Feldthusen, dean of law at the University of Ottawa …” (LINK to media article.) .. In the latter case, we can trust that Citizen Publisher Jim Orban (and BOG member, University of Ottawa) will make any needed corrections to in-house journalistic practice and to the public record. .. [Photo credit: University of Ottawa; Bruce Feldthusen.] .. .. From: Mireille Gervais Sent: August 12, 2009 11:53 AM To: Bruce Feldthusen Cc: roseann_runte[at]carleton.ca; Allan Rock; jorban[at]thecitizen.canwest.com; wrc[at]sfuo.ca; womyns_centre[at]cusaonline.com .. Subject: Faculty of Law Dean Feldthusen must retract legitimization of rape victim blaming .. Ottawa August 12, 2009 .. Bruce Feldthusen Dean Faculty of Common Law University of Ottawa .. RE: Your Comments In Ottawa Citizen Article on Carleton University Rape Victim Lawsuit .. Dean Feldthusen, .. You were cited in a Saturday August 8, 2009, Ottawa Citizen article (Carleton Accused of ‘Victim Blaming’) regarding your opinions on the lawsuit involving the brutal August 2007 campus rape of a female student at Carleton University. Carleton University’s statement of defense claims that the victim failed to keep a ‘proper lookout’ and that the victim did not take sufficient steps to ensure her own safety. .. You were quoted as saying “pleadings are pleadings, and everybody is obligated to overstate their case at the pleadings stage.” Contrary to your inexcusable position, when a woman is attacked and raped while in her workspace on a university campus, her face smashed to the floor repeatedly necessitating serious medical attention, to blame her for not having kept the ‘proper lookout’ is not to overstate a defense, it is victim blaming in a most vile form and a shameful attempt at making women responsible for rape. .. You go on to state that “there's a case, I think, where the legal culture is just a little different from what people think.” This type of elitist logic cannot be justified in our legalistic world where so few can afford legal representation. If the legal culture is one where it is legitimate to fabricate arguments in a way that reinforces the worst sexist stereotypes and assigns the blame for violent attacks squarely on the victims, then there is something profoundly wrong with the legal profession as you profess it. .. As both an alumnus of and a graduate student at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law, I am outraged that an official from the University would attempt to pass off Carleton University’s pleadings as normal, healthy, and ethical. .. In light of the seriousness of the circumstances, I believe that at the very least a retraction of your statements is necessary to show that the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law does not condone Carleton University’s unacceptable position. .. Mireille Gervais LL.L Graduate Student in Law (Social Justice Concentration) .. cc. Roseann O’Reilly Runte, President, Carleton University Allan Rock, President, University of Ottawa Jim Orban, Publisher, The Ottawa Citizen Amy Hammett, Women’s Resource Centre, University of Ottawa Kandace Price, Womyn’s Centre, Carleton University Media and made public .. .. From: Bruce Feldthusen Date: Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 3:01 PM Subject: RE: Faculty of Law Dean Feldthusen must retract legitimization of rape victim blaming To: Mireille Gervais Cc: roseann_runte[at]carleton.ca, Allan Rock , jorban[at]thecitizen.canwest.com, wrc[at]sfuo.ca, womyns_centre[at]cusaonline.com .. Dear All, .. It is true that I was interviewed by a reporter at the Ottawa Citizen and portions of that interview were later quoted in the Citizen on Saturday August 8. During the interview I expressed no opinion whatsoever about a particular sexual assault that had occurred at Carleton University, nor about the lawsuit arising from that sexual assault. I know nothing whatsoever about that case. To her credit, the reporter did not ask me to comment upon a case before the courts Nor did I discuss civil claims and defenses arising from sexual assault in particular. The interview dealt with civil procedure in damage claims generally. I discussed the difference between statements that appear in legal pleadings and statements proven in evidence. I was not asked, and I did not make any comments about the present state of the law as it affects victims of sexual assault. On that subject, my published work speaks for itself. .. Saturday August 8, 2009, Ottawa Citizen article (Carleton Accused of ‘Victim Blaming’) .. Bruce Feldthusen Doyen/Dean Common Law Faculté de Droit/Faculty of Law Université d'Ottawa/University of Ottawa 57 Louis Pasteur Ottawa ON K1N 6N5 Canada 613-562-5927
The letter demands that Rock redress two recent and most blatant abuses of power practiced by the university against its students. The letter describes the cases of international student Ting Ting Wang and physics student Marc Kelly. .
The SFUO also demands that the U of O administration accept the SFUO’s nomination of Mark Kelly to the Senate Appeals Committee. .
The Senate Appeals Committee is the committee whose members refused to identify themselves to grieving students, until the SFUO pressured the University administration by public exposure. .
The SFUO letter makes public that VP-Academic Robert Major illegitimately interfered with Kelly’s nomination to the Senate Appeal’s Committee. The letter states that Major practiced a defamatory character assessment of Kelly, which Major is alleged to have communicated to an SFUO representative in an effort to discredit Kelly’s nomination. .
VP-Academic Major is alleged to have advanced that student Kelly is mentally unstable, in supporting the VP’s rejection of Kelly’s nomination to the Senate Appeals Committee. This is the same VP-Academic Major whose views on gender equity and representative democracy are well known. .
On a sane campus, in a sane world, and on any other campus in North America I would advance, the Board of Governors (BOG) would (would have already) promptly extract(ed) Robert Major’s resignation. .
Is Canada’s university sane? Will it be fixed? The answer is in the hands of the BOG, while the President appears to be watching from the sidelines of international development. .
President Allan Rock was repeatedly questioned by students and professors about the Kelly nomination at his October 24, 2008, address in the Agora, but he did not budge from his position that “we are entitled to have concerns”. .
In addressing the students, Rock appeared to be oblivious to the asymmetry in the fact that students are not entitled to have concerns regarding the nominations of professors and executives to the Senate Appeals Committee. .
[Photo credits: University of Ottawa; Allan Rock, Robert Major.]
The first ever report of the Student Appeal Centre of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa (SFUO) gives the university administration and its executive an unqualified F.
The report was recently made public and describes a tyrannical administration imposing one-sided rules apparently designed to deprive students of both normal due process and unbiased treatment when contesting and appealing arbitrary and life-changing academic decisions made by professors, program directors, and deans.
In the words of the report:
“The most serious appeal cases are the ones related to intimidation, discrimination and unethical behaviour by professors or administrators […] Very rarely are these cases taken seriously nor are they handled respectfully.”
Place of higher learning? The report describes unimaginable regulatory circumstances that would be exemplary in a totalitarian state:
> complete absence of a policy against intimidation and (non-sexual) harassment of undergraduate students,
> professor’s testimony taken at its word versus required proof for student,
> strict deadlines at all stages for students versus no deadlines for the administration,
> cursory treatments and arbitrary case outcome decisions that depend more on who are making the decisions rather than the merits of the cases,
> a secret Senate Appeals Committee that will not identify its members or its chairperson, not even which academic units they represent, and
> terse final appeal decisions provided without documented rulings referring to the evidence or any indication of the grounds for the decisions.
Whereas 11 out of 15 recent cases to the Senate Appeals Committee were believed to be strong enough to win unambiguously, only 2 out of 15 cases won their appeals. The great majority of students, of course, do not take their cases all the way up to a final appeal, given the time, financial resources, and preparation that this requires.
“For years, the Centre and its students have silently and obediently followed the rules and appeal process imposed by the administration. This simply does not work. It’s time for a change.”
The report is dedicated to the Centre’s students “who fought for fair treatment and who told us that ‘people have to know about this.’”
Unless otherwise stated, the views expressed in posts and comments are those of the posting authors. Except if otherwise stated, the views and positions of UofOWatch are those of Denis G. Rancourt, former professor of physics at the University of Ottawa. Obviously, links and references to cited works do not imply agreement with or endorsement of the views expressed or information in the linked postings or cited works.
To Tyler Steeves,
The Student Federation University of Ottawa (SFUO) has just released a public letter addressed to U of O President Allan Rock. The letter is entitled “Flagrant Mistreatment of Students and Disregard of SFUO Nomination Rights”.
The SFUO also demands that the U of O administration accept the SFUO’s nomination of Mark Kelly to the Senate Appeals Committee.
