We write as the four core members of the Planning Group which worked for two full years to develop the detailed physical and academic plans for Trent University before it opened in September, 1964. As authors of the original planning for Trent, we feel that we must respond to the Task Force report on the future of the University that was distributed by President Patterson on October 25th, 1999. It is our firm belief that adoption of the report's recommendations would destroy the character and special qualities that distinguish Trent University, and that they should not, therefore, be accepted as a basis of planning for the future of the University. The report effectively undermines the vision, careful deliberation, and dedicated efforts of thousands of men and women who have laboured and sacrificed for forty years to make Trent University a distinctive place of learning with a high national and international reputation.
The report is the work of a committee largely made up of administrative staff. It is perhaps not surprising that it fails to reflect the human realities of the University, its teaching programs, and the purposes and roles of the colleges. We are concerned that planning for the future of the University is above all an academic matter, which surely requires central and primary involvement of the Senate and the University's academic members.
A report which would so profoundly alter the University's founding principles has been allowed only three weeks of consideration and discussion before the mid-November deadline imposed by the province. The University Senate received the specific proposals for decision from the Administration less than twenty-four hours before its meeting on November 9. This timetable makes a mockery of fair process. The University should surely challenge rather than accept such a blatantly unreasonable procedure.
Because the Task Force proposals have such far-reaching consequences for the character of the University, we urge the Board to assure that members of the University community be given adequate opportunity to consider all their implications with care. We know that this cannot be achieved with the present timetable, and urge the Board to protest the deadline to the provincial government, and to extend substantially the University's internal timetable for debate on the subject before any decisions on its substance are taken. If need be, it should be possible for the University to couch a submission to the provincial Superbuild program in terms that do not involve proposals for the destruction of so much of Trent's collegiate system and special identity.
Yours sincerely,