Trent Action Interviews

Question: Who, exactly is included in President Bonnie Patterson's "holistic" vision of Trent University?

• a) students
• b) faculty
• c) senate
• d) a former employee of the Indonesian government

Tony Whittingham, Patterson's "special advisor" worked for Finance Ministry of the Suharto regime from 1986 to 1990.

This fact, among others was discovered in a wide-ranging and at times stunningly frank discussion with Whittingham last Friday by two students curious to uncover Patterson's idea of democratic process. (It should be noted, however, that the impromptu interview almost never happened. While waiting outside Whittingham's office, the Director of Communications, Kathleen Bain sauntered by and slipped a note under his locked door. She didn't push it far enough. The note read: "Tony- call Kathleen before you open the door." Did the Director of Communications forget that we students were to be included in Patterson's holistic vision? We digress.)Throughout the 30 minute interview - in which Whittingham discussed such topics as his views on the Suharto regime, his experience with crisis control management, the role of Trent's administration, and the future of the university - it became increasingly uncertain as to whether the President even has an idea of the democratic process.

Despite Whittingham's willingness to benefit financially from a governmental regime responsible for the deaths of over 500, 000 East Timorese citizens, the administration obviously had no qualms in hiring him in order to "beef up" Trent's marketing campaign. Apparently previous enrollment campaigns which focused on Trent's small size and its college based system - not to mention its reputation as one of the top five undergraduate institutions in the country - failed to "capture the essence of which Trent represents," says Whittingham. Ironically enough, Whittingham adds that part of the learning process at Trent is to be "sensitized to issues of poverty, homelessness, gender, human rights…"

The timing of Whittingham's appointment, along with Patterson's inclusion of two provincial government employees on the recently completed task force committee leads to the following question: Has Patterson planned all along to change the nature of Trent? This question becomes especially pressing given Whittingham's plans for future marketing - plans which seem to place an emphasis on more "practical" business related courses over liberal arts. He asks: "Are people really driven by a need to study computers, business? How much do people want graduate studies in law? Instead of looking at liberal arts education, the arts and humanities and the sciences as an end in itself - is that still viable, or are people being driven into the arms of the Guelphs, and the Westerns, and the Yorks, and the U of T's?"

The following are a series of statements made by Whittingham on a variety of issues both inside and outside the institution:

• Tony's previous knowledge of Trent:
  "I was almost a Trent student myself. I literally had my boarding school roommate come to Trent. Two or three of my own personal friends are Trent alum's."
• On commodifying dissent:
  "How do you harness that culture of dissent? How do you take it forward? We're trying to make sure that Trent is a home, a house, for a variety of constituencies, and still go forward in a semi-organized fashion without being authoritarian, brutal and centrist driven; and, at the same time that's practical, and organized and pays its bills at the end of the month."
• On crisis control:
  "It has to do with saying: Oh my god, there's been a run on public confidence with this thing. How do we organize an effective and efficient way to re-establish trust and win back confidence in the face of angry dissent, public annoyance, or whatever the thing may be." "We need to see whether or not money is worth being spent on Internal Message Consensus-Building. We want to figure out how we can get Cultural Studies to agree on certain core principles, to see that Trent becomes a happy community which isn't driven by internal disagreements, so we can agree with what we have in common."
• On Trent's administrative process:
  "Whether due process was observed in … the discussions and deliberations that led up to the decision of Bonnie Patterson and the administration to go forward, whether they were proper steps - I don't know. Certainly things moved pretty quickly and it's like ‘whew - gee guys, did we have enough time to reflect on this?"

  "Everyone knows that Trent has always had Peter Robinson and Traill as part of its personality. I don't know whether or not that spirit and those values can migrate to a new location. And maybe it can't; and that's the awful thing when people are talking about killing off part of the institution.

• On Indonesia:
  "It was very exciting stuff. I loved it. It gave me a real insight into developmental priorities."

  "It was a model country … for ensuring that revenues flowed down through the system for infrastructural development, health, education, for the betterment of the needs of the population of the country."

  "…Bearing in mind the somewhat arcane aspects of the top -end economics in a country like Indonesia, which frankly, at the end of the day - we just rolled our eyes and turned a blind eye to."

  "I traveled for several weeks in East Timor, and I'm completely persuaded that - and this is ten, twelve years ago - I'm persuaded that even though there was a mood of suspicion, and a sense of people cowed, with everything I saw when I was there - literally traveling with a backpack on my back, just an ordinary tourist - it was not as country where 500,000 people had been slaughtered and destroyed and so forth. I'm not trying to apologize, but I would certainly say that there is an easy mythology that grows up when you're far away from a place."

  "If you could know what a marvelous and wonderful place it was… I feel strongly that Indonesia is not to be dismissed as some kind of dictatorship."