administration

Tyler Shipley

There is growing acknowledgement... that there is a crisis in post-secondary education and a need for real change in the structure of university funding. This has manifested as a proliferation of student and worker unrest across the country and, indeed, the world; in 2008 and early 2009, there were dozens of university strikes and occupations across the world marked both by broader ideological challenges to the prevailing social order as well as increased repression from campus and state authorities... The recent strike of graduate students and part-time faculty at York University in Toronto over the winter of 2008-09 confronted these questions directly... this piece will sketch a brief history of the funding crisis in post-secondary education in the hopes of highlighting what I think are the crucial pressure-points in fighting back the trends toward inaccessible and watered-down educational experiences for students and low-reward, exploitative working conditions for teachers.

To read the complete article, go to:
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet215.html

Hello,
Google Inc. has received notice of application for an order to disclose information related to your Gmail account yfcfyu@gmail.com in a case entitled York University v. John Doe.

David Noble

York University's appointment of Martin Singer as first Dean of the new, merged Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies signals the institution's de facto abandonment of scholarly achievement as a criterion of evaluation.

On behalf of the York Democratic Forum

Paul Baxter, Jody Berland, Malcolm Blincow, Ricardo Grinspun, Nick Lary, Marcia Macaulay, Arun Mukherjee, Ester Reiter, Nicola Short

In his address to Senate on 26 February –available at http://www.yorku.ca/mediar/archive/Release.php?Release=1623 –President Shoukri delivered his first speech after provincial back-to-work legislation led to a long-delayed return to class and a chaotic end-of-term schedule for students and faculty.

David McNally

Dear President Shoukri, I am writing to protest the disciplinary actions taken by your administration against Students Against Israeli Apartheid at York, specifically the one month suspension of the group and fines against their organization and its contact person.

TheStar.com - Opinion
January 29, 2009

Jody Berland
Ricardo Grinspun

The longest university strike in English Canada ends with back-to-work legislation this week. As full-time faculty at York University we are distressed at the impact of this strike on our 50,000 students, who have confronted enormous disruption to their lives, finances and future.

With such disastrous consequences, what can we learn from this debacle for the future of labour relations in Ontario universities?

Andrea O'Reilly, School of Women's Studies, York

Letter to the National Post, 27 Jan 2009
If anyone thinks that it will be "business as usual" at York University once
classes resume, they are kidding themselves. Professors and students are
returning to a university that has bullied its most vulnerable employees for
close to three months and left its prized graduate students out in the cold. It
is clear that York does not value the excellent teaching done by more than 50%
of its faculty. This is a university where dozens and dozens of professors must
reapply for their teaching position each year. This is a university where
mid-management types -- who spend their day pushing paper -- make up to 10

Message to the York Community signed by the Deans of York University

When CUPE 3903 went on strike in November, we all undertook to seek the suspension, with limited exceptions, of academic activities in our Faculties. In so doing, we acknowledged our reliance on the work of our CUPE colleagues in helping to carry out the academic mission of the University. In addition, we continue to recognize the importance to our graduate students of financial support for the successful completion of their “apprenticeship” in our profession.

Union negotiators sometimes refer to 'principled' vs. 'positional' bargaining. In principled bargaining, both sides approach negotiation as an opportunity to solve a problem. In positional bargaining, both sides seek to score points on issues and to influence opinions as well as contract language. Over the course of the CUPE 3903 strike, we have seen several examples of 'positional' bargaining by the Employer. These actions undermine the work of both bargaining teams and pose additional risks to the collegiality of the University.

Janice Newson

Letter to President Shoukri, 27 Nov 2008

I am a faculty member in the Arts sociology department and I will be retired in 3 days. I have been at York since 1971 and from 1975 through until 1997 when the 8 week YUFA strike took place, I have been close to and often deeply involved in the negotiating process at York.

David Noble

In a Globe and Mail profile published just after his first week in office, York University's new president Mandouh Shoukri revealed his bold plans to "renovate" the university by focusing upon commercialized research in science, engineering, and medicine. "That is what my mandate is all about," Shoukri explained, "the direction is set."…

At York , of course, it will be an easy sell, as it always is in an autocratic environment... And some will see in the coming renovation a career or organizational opportunity. Already Arthur Hilliker, the president of the faculty association, has publicly echoed Shoukri in his enthusiastic and self-serving –he is chairman of the biology department –endorsement of the mandate.