Volume 28, No. 10 Editor: Mark Langer December, 1997 DAMAGE CONTROL AND SPIN DOCTORING The lights have been burning late in Robertson Hall as Duncan Watt and his crack team of financial wizards rework the books in order to produce the desired result for management. Meanwhile, university spin doctor Jack Coghill practices damage control by circulating an e-mail memo on 28 November, via faculty-staff@ news.carleton.ca . Some of the defence points that administration voiced through Coghill are so lamentably weak that we need not address them here. However, some of them do bring up substantial points related to university governance, transparency, and management s credibility. MANAGEMENT CLAIMS Full consultation has taken place and the process is not rushed. FACT While a small cadre, largely appointed by management, did discuss the issues and met with representatives of academic units considered for closure, there was no discussion of redundancy with faculty boards in order to determine how other programs would be affected by the elimination of redundant programs. Admissions to graduate programs in languages and literature were frozen without consultation with the Graduate Faculty Board or Senate. While President van Loon has given reports on the university s finances in This Week at Carleton, and has made occasional allusions to small cuts that would affect few in the university, this does not constitute widespread consultation. Consultation implies a two-way communication, not an I ll talk, you listen process. Programs slated for redundancy by SAPC /ARC had two working days to respond. Senate s meeting to discuss program redundancy was moved up a week when it became known that admission to the graduate programs in languages and literature were frozen. Senators were given the documentation to consider the issue of closing specific programs one day before the meeting. Discussion of each motion necessary for a declaration of redundancy was scheduled to be limited to a half hour. After management s $500,000 bookkeeping error was discovered due to a leak of confidential information, they now assure us that we will be able to examine the administration s version of their figures for a full 24 hours. It will not necessarily come with any indication as to how they arrived at their cost/income figures. But Jack Coghill still asserts that This has not been a rushed process . Readers of this newsletter may have another view. Management has several employees working full-time on the production of cost/benefit figures, and they have been doing this for over a year now. CUASA has nothing like the equivalent resources. Yet management wants CUASA to evaluate and comment on its latest output of figures within 24 hours of receiving them. According to the current Collective Agreement, no notice of layoff can be given until 1 May 1998. Management cannot claim that it is forced to act in accordance with the schedule it has chosen. MANAGEMENT CLAIMS The constitutions of the faculty boards have not been violated by the management s process to close programs and fire faculty. FACT While there is a notwithstanding clause in the constitution of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, management has pushed this to the limit. Every little calendar change that Senate approves is referred to faculty boards for comment. Now, management thinks that we should find nothing exceptional in the unprecedented closure of programs without any comment from faculty boards. Both Graduate Faculty Board and the Faculty Board of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences have conveyed their strong displeasure at the lack of consultation to Senate. Are we to think that they are imagining this? MANAGEMENT CLAIMS Management claims that there was no error amounting to $500,000 in the budget for the departments concerned. They claim that the change in the costs for the School of Languages, Literature and Comparative Literary Studies is less than $100,000". FACT By its own admission, management had allocated the salaries of eight professors (three in Classics and five in SLLCLS ), each earning in excess of $75,000 a year, plus other costs, to SLLCLS /Classics. Now that this mistake has become public, management wants you to think that removing the salary costs of eight professors from the total costs of these programs will result in a correction of less that $100,000. Now, that s creative accounting! CUASA has consistently asked that management make available to Senate, Faculty Boards and the union not only the final figures that it is using to justify program closure, but the data used to arrive at those figures. CUASA also asks that adequate time be given to absorb and evaluate the validity of those figures - not 24 hours! MANAGEMENT CLAIMS Cost/income information was only one criterion used to judge the viability of SLLCLS . Academic merit, complementarity of the program with the University s academic goals, and program demand were the others. FACT President Van Loon wrote a letter to the Ottawa Citizen objecting to the characterization of programs deemed redundant as mediocre . Was consideration of academic merit used as a criterion? The Senate Academic Planning Committee/Academic Renewal Committee report to Senate of 24 Nov. 1997 specifically excluded academic merit in arriving at its decision on the program in SLLCLS . Senators are in a good position to judge the truth of management s assertion in the Coghill memo. The rest of us might notice that the noses of several administration members seem a bit longer. WHAT IS TO BE DONE? Senate and the rest of the Carleton community should demand a full, transparent and deliberate discussion of program redundancy. CUASA acknowledges that our Collective Agreement does provide for the termination of tenured faculty for reasons of program redundancy. So do the collective agreements signed by many other faculty associations and university administrations. But not a single university has seen fit to fire faculty after program closure. Will Carleton? That remains to be seen. There is a division of opinion regarding the desirability of this for the university. But there should be no division of opinion on one thing. An unprecedented proposal that affects the lives of so many of our colleagues, support staff and students must be examined through a process that is fair, deliberate and based on accurate information and the application of all relevant criteria. So far, management has brought a storm of adverse publicity on the university by failing to provide such a fair process. How this has damaged Carleton is impossible to calculate. Senate has it in its power to correct the errors of management and redeem the reputation of Carleton in the aftermath of yet another public relations debacle. CUASA is confident that Senate will act properly.