A petition calling for significant changes within the department of political science was endorsed by the Concordia Student Union and the Arts and Science Federation of Associations this week.
The petition, brought to both groups by its author Gene Morrow, contains six points covering issues such as grade changes in the form of bell curving, loss of space on campus and cutting popular courses without consulting students or faculty.
The petition calls for immediate intervention by Brian Lewis, dean of arts and science, and has already been signed by 250 students. Lewis said that he is “talking to a number of people to try to better understand the situation in political science,” and that discussions with faculty and student representatives were continuing.
Schubert Laforest, president of the CSU, said that the issues raised in the petition are ones that have been followed closely by council. Council officially gave their support at the regular council meeting Wednesday with a motion that will promote and distribute the petition to students.
“I think that the petition does bring out a lot of issues not just at the political science department but across the arts and science faculty,” he said. “I think this is just the tip of the iceberg, and we’re going to be sitting down with [Morrow] and ASFA to figure out what we need to do going forward.”
James Tyler Vaccaro, VP communications of the Political Science Student Association said that while the association did not draft the petition, they had “acted as a source of information when called on by both ASFA and CSU councils” and that he hoped the issues raised in the petition would be resolved soon.
He also said that contrary to the sixth point on the petition, which deals with an apparent lack of availability and transparency by department chair Csaba Nikolenyi, the PSSA had not experienced the same problem.
“We have not had any difficulties meeting him to discuss a broad range of topics this year,” said Vaccaro.
Morrow, a student in the political science department, told The Concordian that he suspected he knew why the PSSA’s experiences had been different than those of some students.
“The PSSA, because they are the institutional actor within the department, they are the appropriate contact point between students and faculty,” he said. “I think that they have a much better time getting access to speaking with the chair, but they don’t necessarily have better access to the information than anyone else does a lot of the time.”
“For example a member of Senate tried to get minutes from the departmental council, and was told to file an access to information request,” Morrow said. “They were told point blank you cannot get access to this without filing an ATI request. Why is this necessary? Why does this have to be walled off and blocked?”
Morrow went on to say that students within the department were often starved for information when it came to decisions made by the chair and faculty, including why they were made or who was involved.
“People would be willing to tolerate that, but there’s never any communication from the department to students. There’s never any communication to students about what’s happening in the department. The general feeling is that we’re an afterthought.”
New copies of the petition will be available at the offices of the CSU and the PSSA for students who did not have a chance to sign the first petition.
