December 1, 1999
Susan Mackle,
Vice-President (Advancement),
Trent University,
Peterborough, Ontario.
Dear Susan,
I received a few days ago your letter and enclosures about the Trent Annual Fund for 1999, in the midst of the controversy over the University's proposal for funding from the provincial Superbuild Growth Fund.
Given the division that the Board's action has created within the University community, the timing for this request hardly seems appropriate. My views about the procedures involved in that decision, and the substance of the Superbuild proposal, have been expressed elsewhere.
Like all other protests against the Board's decision, this expression of dissent seems to have been entirely futile. In general I believe that ex-faculty and administration of the University should not involve themselves in the current affairs of the University, and I have not done so until the current crisis. But I believe that a sufficiently serious threat to the nature of the University compels the comments that I and others have made. These comments have not received even the courtesy of an acknowledgement from the President: only an uncivil and inaccurate reply from a member of the Board.
Because I remain convinced that the Board's proposal (if it is supported by the province) will destroy some of Trent's essential features, I no longer wish to indicate my confidence in the University through donations to its financial campaigns. I will thus not be making any contribution to the Annual Fund this year. In addition, I am planning to alter my will to remove a legacy to the University which now appears in it.
I should add that the nature of your Annual Fund mailing, featuring unidentified photographs of President Patterson on every piece in the mailing (that is, five times), would be inappropriate in Trent literature at any time. But it is especially distasteful now, at a time when the President is the originator and moving force (or immoveable force) in plans to destroy major elements of the University.
I deeply regret having to write this kind of letter.
Yours sincerely,Denis Smith