PRESS RELEASE – Friday Jan 21 2000
TRENT FACULTY MEMBERS LAUNCH LEGAL ACTION
A group of Trent faculty, fighting to preserve what they see as the integrity of the University’s educational policy, today brought in one of Canada’s most distinguished lawyers to handle their case.
The lawyer is John Laskin of the Toronto law firm Torys, who has filed, on behalf of three Trent faculty members, an application for judicial review of a November 12, 1999 resolution of Trent’s Board of Governors. The resolution approved a capital development plan which called for the closing and sale of Trent’s traditional downtown academic Colleges.
The three faculty members making the application are Peter Kulchyski -- Chair of Native Studies, Ian McLachlan -- Chair of Cultural Studies, and Andrew Wernick -- Director of the Methodologies Graduate Program. Both McLachlan and Wernick are former Masters of Peter Robinson, one of the affected downtown Colleges. McLachlan is a member of Senate, and a recent member of the Board of Governors. Kulchyski has been prominently involved in planning and fund-raising for a building development, involving Native Studies and Humanities facilities, slated for the Peter Robinson campus.
At issue is the right of Senate to determine matters of educational policy as provided for by Trent’s governing legislation.
According to the application filed today, Trent’s downtown Colleges are ‘centres of academic and social activity’ and ‘an integral part of the educational policy of the University’ since its founding.
Trent’s downtown Colleges have been the focus of concern and protest since last October when a task force recommended that they be sold as part of the centralisation of facilities on the main campus. The recommendation was included in Trent’s Superbuild application made in November. Since October there have been protests, demonstrations and expressions of concern by a variety of groups including students, faculty, staff, alumni and members of the downtown Peterborough community.
On November 9, 1999, Senate passed a motion calling for the preservation of Trent’s downtown and other Colleges in the University’s application to the Ontario Superbuild Growth Fund. On November 12, 1999, the Board of Governors nonetheless adopted a resolution purporting to authorize the closing and sale of the downtown Colleges.
‘We are taking this action because we care about the future of Trent’, said Peter Kulchyski. ‘Important academic and educational issues are involved in decisions affecting the downtown and other Colleges. We believe that the Board did not – against the wishes of Senate – have the right to approve a plan to close them.’
Important issues of academic autonomy are also at stake, affecting other universities. Bill Graham, President of the Canadian Association of University Teachers said that ‘the Board of Governors resolution must be challenged in order to protect the proper role and
authority of the University Senate, the top University academic
governing body’.
For information contact
Peter Kulchyski
Ian McLachlan
Andrew Wernick