Hey all,
An interesting e-mail sent out by the University President, Allan Rock, this afternoon passed under my nose. The e-mail explains that “for the second time, the Senate was unable to proceed in light of ‘obstructions’ [my quotation marks] by non-Senators” – in this case, students armed with cameras in protest of the proposed Senate policy to ban private recording of their meetings (public meetings, no less), which would give the University a monopoly on the distribution of the recordings. Why go so far to protect a public meeting?
Anyways, President Rock proposes that we all discuss it (the same way we ‘discussed’ [my quotation marks] tuition fee increases in the Fall) in a public forum, in this case Facebook. Then the Senate will vote on the policy by mail-in ballot.
The kicker here is that one student Senator, Michael Cheevers, had his Facebook account deleted last year after the University’s legal counsel complained to Facebook that he had created mock profiles for the former President, Gilles Patry, and Goldcorp mogul Ian Telfer (he claims to this day he is indeed innocent, and with good reason).
So how are we to have a public discussion on the issue when one of our student Senators can’t even take part?
How Canada’s University can be strange sometimes…
