A group of students interrupted a joint meeting of Concordia’s Board of Governors and Senate on Tuesday meant to introduce university presidential candidate Dr. Alan Shepard.
The chants of approximately 20 students drowned out the congregation gathered in the D.B. Clarke Theatre at 12 p.m.
Led by geography student and Mob Squad member Alex Matak on a megaphone, the students, who say they are frustrated with the university’s response to the student strike against provincial tuition hikes, called on the administration to hear their demands.
The disruption prompted Concordia Student Union President Lex Gill and CSU councillor and student governor Cameron Monagle to try to calm students in order to proceed with the meeting. As a last effort, Gill stood at the podium to speak but was impossible to hear over the noise.
University spokesperson Chris Mota confirmed that Shepard, who currently serves as provost and VP academic at Ryerson University, would not be returning for another public meeting at Concordia.
“On behalf of the university community I think it’s unfortunate that the opportunity was taken away from us,” said Mota.
Alex MacPherson, president of the technicians’ union, said that while he supports the student movement, it was “disappointing” that others could not speak and express their views.
Gill was also visibly frustrated that the meeting did not take place. In an informal gathering of students that took place shortly after the failed meeting, Gill emphasized that individual professors or members of administration that do support the students fight against the increase “left the meeting embarrassed.”
“There was an opportunity here to make this meeting what we wanted it to be,” said Gill. “Instead the meeting didn’t happen.”
Alan Shepard currently works at Ryerson University. Photo by Colin McNeil, The Ryersonian
Concordia’s presidential search committee announced Dr. Alan Shepard as its candidate recommendation for the position of university president.
A joint meeting between the Board of Governors and Senate to introduce presidential candidate Shepard will be held in the D.B. Clarke auditorium on April 24 at 12 p.m. The meeting will be open to the Concordia students, faculty and staff.
The Presidential Search Committee unanimously recommended Shepard, the current provost at Ryerson University, for the position. Shepard would replace interim President Frederick Lowy, who took the position in January 2011 following the abrupt departure of former president Judith Woodsworth.
Committee member and Concordia Student Union President, Lex Gill, believes Shepard’s academic background and his “fresh and young perspective on governance and university affairs” will be beneficial to the university.
“I feel positively about Dr. Shepard,” Gill said. “He’s very dialogue-focused and building relationships which I feel is what Concordia University needs right now.”
Concordia also announced the appointment of Norman Hébert Jr. as the new chair of the Board of Governors .
Norman Hébert Jr. was appointed as chair of the Board of Governors upon the recommendation of the university’s governance and ethics committee. His three-year term will begin on July 1 2012. For six years Hébert served as a member of the advisory board of the John Molson School of Business and is currently vice-chair of Concordia’s board.
In March, The Concordian reported that Hébert was absent from two of the three board meetings held last fall.
In addition, Provost David Graham announced the appointment of Steve Harvey as the new dean of the JMSB. His five-year term will take effect on July 1, 2012.
Interim Concordia University President Frederick Lowy adresses students' call for broadcasting Board of Governors meetings - Photo by Navneet Pall
Interim Concordia University President Frederick Lowy adresses students’ call for broadcasting Board of Governors meetings – Photo by Nazli Bozoglu
Last Friday’s Board of Governors meeting ended abruptly even before its open session began. The meeting came to a halt toward the end of its hour-long closed session, when three student governors, undergraduates AJ West and Cameron Monagle and graduate student Erik Chevrier, walked out in protest over a motion to discuss the presence of cameras in the meeting. The representatives said they felt the discussion should have been held in the open session, when members of the audience would have been able to observe. With the absence of the three student governors, the BoG did not have quorum to continue with the meeting.
While the majority of governors already voiced their disapproval of the idea in January when they voted down a motion put forward by Chevrier that would have mandated the BoG to offer live broadcasts, it remains unclear if individuals should be permitted to film the meetings with their own cameras.
The question will likely be brought up again at the board’s next meeting on April 19.
Concordia Student Union President and student governor Lex Gill has gone on record saying that allowing cameras in the boardroom would greatly contribute to upping transparency at the BoG, indicating that as it stands, “the board operates in a way that it’s accountable to no one.”
One person who disagrees with that statement, and who believes that the BoG is “as transparent as it should be,” is Concordia’s interim President Frederick Lowy, who was brought in last year to put out the political fires following the BoG’s ousting of Lowy’s predecessor, Judith Woodsworth. The Concordian recently sat down with Dr. Lowy to get his thoughts on cameras in the boardroom and on what can be done to bridge the disconnect between Concordia’s Board of Governors and the student population.
What was your reaction to the Feb. 10 board meeting ending the way it did? Could something have been done to bring about a different outcome?
Well I’m disappointed. The board is an important part of our operation. It has a job to do, and if it can’t do its job properly, things slow down. The outcome, as you know, was a lack of quorum forcing the meeting to stop. That lack of quorum was caused by three out of the four student representatives [Gill remained in the boardroom] walking out and thereby depriving the meeting of legitimacy. If the students had not walked out, the meeting would have continued, so ask them [about other potential outcomes].
Do you have a personal position on broadcasting board meetings live?
I do. Although cameras are appropriate in courts of law and in parliaments, they are not appropriate at universities. And I know that my opinion is not an opinion that is in the minority. Every single university in Canada, that we know of, does not permit filming or broadcasting of board meetings.
The issue of filming and broadcasting is also related to our ability to keep volunteer board members. Obviously they’re interested in the university to start with because they accept to be board members, but we have to persuade a number of people we want on the board to be on our board, because they have other boards to go on as well. So when there is a concern on the part of some of them that they’re not going to be able to speak freely in board meetings without their words being taken out of context, well, that’s an ongoing problem.
Most of the people who come to the board are not politicians, they don’t choose to be in a public forum. So there are two goods here of positive value: on the one hand, you have the good of transparency, and on the other hand, the good of free speech, so it’s a question of balancing both of them.
But some would argue that BoG meetings are already being recorded, such as by journalists who use tape recorders.
We count on members of the press to be responsible reporters. What they’re likely to do, as they’ve done in the past, is report decisions, but they don’t report who said what, and with what tone of voice, and so on. Those things are private. Unless somebody is actually being interviewed, reporters don’t pick up these kinds of nuances, people taking to each other in an unguarded fashion. Because what we want is for people to be able to talk in an unguarded fashion, rather than to measure all their words and be politically correct all the time.
Then in your opinion, is the board as transparent as it can be?
I don’t think it’s as transparent as it can be, but I think perhaps it’s as transparent as it should be. There’s more transparency than there has been before. And so long as there’s transparency that doesn’t at the same time inhibit people from doing what they’re there to do, then that’s a balance that I think is appropriate. Whether we’ve got the ultimate best, I don’t know. I’m not saying it can’t be improved, and if it can be improved, it should be, but we must find a way to improve without turning off people from becoming board members.
It’s become painfully clear that there is a disconnect between the student governors and most of the rest of the BoG. What can be done to bridge this gap?
We need to continue what we’re doing right now, namely talk to each other. I’m hoping, and other members of the board I’m sure are hoping as well, to talk with student governors and other students about this and work out a way of handling our different opinions. It is in nobody’s interest to see the board come to a halt.
CSU President Lex Gill has said that the “board operates in a way that it is accountable to no one.” What is your reaction to that statement?
I don’t agree with her statement. I agree with her on a lot of things, but that’s not one of them. First of all, board members are responsible to each other. The board is not a single monolithic bloc of people who all think the same. There are sufficient differences within the board to ensure this doesn’t happen. The board is ultimately responsible to the public through its representatives. The board issues reports on its activities each year, its open sessions are open to anybody and anyone who wishes has access to the board’s minutes online.
The board has developed quite a negative image in the eyes of students who have become increasingly frustrated with its operations. How can the board improve its standing among the student population?
I know they’re frustrated; it’s clear that many students don’t hold the board in high regard. That doesn’t mean that board members aren’t trying. In fact, a tremendous amount of them are graduates of our university and have an important stake in the university. The board is changing. The membership, the composition is changing. And I think the board is aware of the problem [negative image among students] and I think they’re trying to fix it. Certainly it’s in everyone’s best interest that not only the board do its job properly, but that it be seen to be doing its job.
Simone de Beauvoir Institute supports general strike
The last CSU council meeting began with a presentation from two representatives of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, a Concordia college dedicated to studying feminism and questions of social justice. The institute announced its full support for the fight against tuition hikes. The representatives said the institute “as a whole” decided to support the general strike set to take place by the end of March.
The two representatives said it was the first clear feminist approach to the general strike.
“What we really wanted to bring to the forefront was the impact of the tuition increase on women,” said SdBI representative Gabrielle Bouchard. “Women today still make less money than their male counterparts so the impact of the tuition increase on women will be significant.”
Bouchard added that the stance will make the institute’s job easier to openly side with the students and to encourage other departments to join them in supporting the general strike. Several councillors congratulated and thanked the SdBI for their decision.
Two fee levy questions approved
Two new fee levy questions will appear on students’ ballots during March’s CSU general election.
CSU council approved the fee levy questions of Le Frigo Vert and the 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy. The former is asking for an eight-cents increase in its fee levy, from 25 cents per credit to 33 cents, while the latter is asking for a jump from 29 cents per credit to 39 cents.
Le Frigo Vert said they were delighted by the council’s decision to put their question on the ballot, as they are currently struggling with increasing rent and other fixed costs.
“We don’t get a university space and our landlord keeps increasing the rent every year,” said collective member Bronwen Agnew. “The CSU’s decision is a big relief.”
During the meeting, CSU VP finance Jordan Lindsay said the anti-mainstream food industry cooperative offered “the best food on campus.”
New appointment procedure adopted for BoG student rep
The CSU adopted a new procedure for selecting the two representatives on Concordia’s Board of Governors. CSU President Lex Gill, who currently sits on the BoG, reported that the student body at large will not have its say on the selection anymore. Student representatives will be appointed directly by CSU council, but will not necessarily have to be councillors. “The representative could also come from the student body at large,” said Gill. The BoG voted in September to decrease the number of undergraduate student governors from four to one, with an “alternate” governor being added with speaking rights only. The changes come into effect July 1.
February’s Board of Governors meeting abruptly ended on Feb. 10 even before its open session began.
The meeting came to a halt toward the end of its hour-long closed session, when three student governors, undergrads AJ West and Cameron Monagle and grad student Erik Chevrier, walked out in protest over a motion to discuss allowing cameras in the meeting. All student representatives, including CSU President Lex Gill who remained in the boardroom, felt that this transparency-related motion should have been discussed during the meeting’s open session, when members of the audience would be able to observe.
With the absence of West, Monagle and Chevrier, quorum, which is 21 governors, was no longer met, effectively prohibiting the rest of the BoG members from voting on motions, and ultimately cancelling the meeting.
The majority of governors already voted down a motion in January put forward by Chevrier that mandated the board to offer live broadcasts of its meetings. The motion presented on Feb. 10 in closed session, according to West, dealt with transparency at the BoG level, including the potential use of cameras by individuals in the boardroom.
“This is still something that has yet to be clarified, and I imagine this is something that will be brought up again,” said West, who had implored students at a Concordia Student Union council meeting in January to bring their cameras to the BoG meeting. There were as many as fifteen to twenty students waiting outside the boardroom on Friday, some of them indeed carrying cameras.
“This was a discussion [during closed session] that the student representatives thought should have happened in open session, so we refused to take part,” added West.
Speaking to reporters outside the boardroom, Gill, who indicated that she could not touch on specific discussions held during closed session, spoke more broadly about the need for cameras during the BoG’s open session.
“The rationale for why people should be able to film and broadcast the open session is that first of all, we’ve always done it anyway,” she said, mentioning the fact that journalists, for example, are allowed in the boardroom with tape recorders. “I think everyone should have the right to film these meetings and have the right to see what’s going on. This university is publicly-funded, financed by your tuition fees and tax dollars. […] The reality, I think, of this situation is that [the BoG] has to be accountable to someone. Right now they operate in a way that they’re accountable to no one.”
Gill spoke vaguely about the possibility of bringing forward a proposal regarding the use of cameras at the BoG’s next meeting on April 19. All other items that were on the agenda for the Feb. 10 meeting will, in all likelihood, also be discussed during that meeting.
The Board of Governors approved Concordia’s new academic plan by a unanimous vote at its monthly meeting last Thursday.
Spearheaded by Provost and VP of academic affairs David Graham, the plan will serve as a strategic guide for university growth. The objective of the plan is to have Concordia recognized as a top five comprehensive university by 2016 by improving research performance, teaching and academic programming.
“I feel great,” said Graham, who’s been developing the plan for over two years. “I’ve invested a lot of time and energy on it, so I am pleased to see the work that came into it is paying off.”
The presentation at the meeting broke down where the majority of the plan’s $25 million budget will go: $7.45 million for improving research at Concordia, $6.16 million to graduate students programming, $4.5 million towards new acquisitions for Concordia’s two libraries.
The academic plan passed with two abstentions from undergraduate governors Laura Beach and Cameron Monagle.
Graham had presented the plan to Concordia’s Student Union council in November but it was turned down by student councillors, their main objection being that it was formed without much student input.
“As part of senate, I voted against it two months ago, I felt that there was more time needed, more cost questions needed to be answered,” said CSU president Lex Gill. Gill ultimately decided to vote for the plan at Thursday’s meeting.
“Even though I personally opposed the plan, Senate decided to adopt this document, and out of respect for the senate, at the BoG meeting on Thursday, as a student governor I decided to vote in favour,” she said.
Monagle said the plan represents a step forward for Concordia in theory, but he was not entirely sold on some of the more “troubling components.”
“It wobbles between the vague and the bizarrely specific,” Monagle said. “Also, there is a flagrant disregard for undergraduate students, who despite being Concordia’s bread-and-butter, were hardly even mentioned in early drafts. Most importantly, I can’t support a plan funded by tuition hikes that simply cannot be implemented.”
Looking ahead with the academic plan in effect, Monagle said that the CSU will need to continue to work with the senate and faculty to make sure that the plan’s implementation is done in a way consistent with its broader goals.
“The CSU needs to keep a close eye on what’s happening, and pick a fight when necessary,” added Monagle.
Former Concordia President Judith Woodsworth received $747,045 in severance and taxable benefits in the 11-month fiscal year that ended April 30, 2011, as well as a portion of her annual base salary of $351,750 for her time in office from June to December 2010, according to the university’s audited financial statements.
The statements were released in the days prior to last week’s Board of Governors meeting, and reveal the salary and benefits of 28 senior university administrators, including several who left before completing their terms.
Woodsworth was ousted by the BoG on Dec. 22 of last year. Soon after her departure it was reported that she would receive $703,500 under the terms of her contract, equivalent to two years’ worth of her annual base salary.
According university spokesperson Chris Mota, the total amount of taxable benefits  Woodsworth received between June 1, 2010 and Dec. 22 also included a “housing allowance of $3,000 per month, car allowance of $1,200 per month, the employer’s cost of health insurance and similar items.”
According to Freedman, some academic administrators are entitled to a six-month administrative leave after they finish their terms where they continue to receive their administrator’s salary. The leave is meant to allow the administrator to re-acclimatize themselves to the academic world before re-entering it, Freedman said. An administrator can exercise their indemnity rights if they do not use the leave.
Freedman specified that type of arrangement is not unique to Concordia.
Woodsworth was also reimbursed for $18,230 worth of expenses for university business-related activities.
Kathy Assayag, former VP advancement and alumni relations, was paid a base salary of $283,785 plus taxable benefits of $113,298, the second highest amount of taxable benefits after Woodsworth. Assayag stepped down on Sept. 21, 2010 for personal reasons.
Former dean of the John Molson School of Business Sanjay Sharma, who left for a position at the University of Vermont at the end of the winter semester, was given a salary of $246,174 in addition to $62,504 of taxable benefits. He was also reimbursed for $27,714 worth of business-related expenses, the highest of the 28 administrators listed in the financial statements.
Responding to a question about interim president Frederick Lowy’s expense report, which The Concordian reported included $9,000 in airfare, $4,000 for car expenses and $3,000 for hotel rooms in the past year, Freedman said, “The intimation of that question is that is a lot of money so yes, it is a lot of money but I should add that one of the main roles of the president of the university, especially a large university like ours, is to travel on behalf of the university and promote the university.”
Asked whether such expenses could be viewed as university waste, Freedman responded, “We don’t feel that any of these expenses are wasted, or that the university is hemorrhaging money. Obviously, we feel that these are all justified expenses.
“I think we all take very seriously the notion that we work for a public institution that is supported by taxpayers’ dollars, that is supported by students’ tuition fees, and I think we make particular efforts to be responsible and conservative. I understand it may not appear that way, looking at some of these numbers, [but] we are huge institution. […] I think it is important to look at it in the context of a $350 million a year operating budget and 7,000 employee operation with, as you know, 45,000 students.”
Concordia’s Board of Governors is in agreement with one representative’s call for increased transparency at their meetings—they just can’t agree on how to do it.
The board is rethinking the way it holds its meetings after graduate representative Erik Chevrier proposed to much debate last Thursday a series of motions formulated to open up the Board’s activities to a wider audience.
After rejecting one motion, the board decided to send two discussion points to the executive committee for further review.
Chevrier said that the motions were presented in the hopes of getting the board to take “a proactive stance” against controversy.
“Concordia picked up quite a big deal of bad press when Judith Woodsworth was let go,” said Chevrier, referring to the dismissal of Concordia’s former president last December, asking that the board take steps to avoid future conflicts by adopting some sort of transparency agreement.
The defeated motion called for the location of the board meetings to be able to have no less than 50 seats for those who wish to attend in the same room.
Changes were also proposed to the way board meetings are run, calling for all open session board meetings to be video recorded and broadcast, and to establish a 20-minute period in which the public at large can ask questions or comment.
The board’s executive committee will study these two ideas, then present their recommendations to the full board. No specific deadline was given for the report.
Each motion was presented individually, resulting in nearly an hour of heated discussion between board members.
One board member, Robert Barnes, representing the alumni for the Sir George Williams Alumni Association, warned the student representatives to “be mindful of the time other people are giving and in the way that you are trying to get your point forward.”
“I’ve heard probably seven times this morning the underlying reason for something in one of your motions is about your representation on the board. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over,” said Barnes, referring to the decision made in September to lessen the number of undergraduate student reps from four to one.
“If you come in attack mode you’re going to continually see every one of your motions shot down in flames and that’s what’s been happening over the last few meetings. You have not gained one motion because you’re ticking people off,” Barnes said.
During this discourse, chair Peter Kruyt told undergraduate student governor and Concordia Student Union president Lex Gill to “please don’t interrupt” after she asked for a point of privilege.
Undergrad representative Laura Beach spoke out in support of the motion, which she referred to as “a tool that we can use as a board to demonstrate that what we do is in the best interest of the Concordia community.”
“The media is at best your friend and worst your enemy,” said Beach. “We can’t and we shouldn’t rely on the media to represent what goes on at this board in an impartial manner.”
However, opinions varied on how this goal of transparency could be best achieved. With regards to the idea of broadcasting board meetings, several board members conveyed their worries that this would make people feel less inclined to speak openly, resulting in lengthier meetings that have more closed session discussions.
”I certainly don’t want to feel that our board is portrayed as closed so that people in our larger university community feel excluded, but at the same time our board has to operate efficiently,” said Concordia president and vice-chancellor Frederick Lowy.
Concerns were also expressed that a 20-minute question period would not be productive, fearing that the open forum would degenerate into rants as members of the general public lack access to all of the board’s documents and may not be informed enough to make effective cases on issues.
New boardroom, less room
The discussion at last week’s meeting surrounding the motion to increase public seating at Board of Governors meetings to a minimum of 50 seats was stymied by the completion of a brand new boardroom whose capacity was unknown to members at the time.
Located on the fourth floor of the GM building, the new boardroom can seat approximately 45 people.
According to university spokesperson Chris Mota, the new boardroom may not be available for use until 2012.
“The room has been completed but is not yet available as a result of the major renovation project that is ongoing in the GM building,” Mota wrote in an email, adding that the “room was configured in anticipation of a smaller board.”
Chair Peter Kruyt said at the meeting that the current board had no say in the specifications of the room and that plans were done by previous management.
“We have what we have,” said Kruyt.
Board of Governors meetings currently take place in a modified classroom on the 2nd floor of the EV building.
The cancellation of this Wednesday’s Board of Governors meeting has student representatives searching for a concrete reason, while the administration has remained vague about the decision.
An Oct. 7 email sent to all governors by Danielle Tessier, director of board and senate administration, indicated that the Oct. 20 meeting had been cancelled “due to potential quorum issues.”
The news of the cancellation was only officially communicated to the wider campus community in an Oct. 12 email from Tessier’s assistant Evelyne Loo, who never specified the reason. When asked in a follow-up email from the Concordian, Loo responded that she didn’t know why the meeting had been cancelled, but confirmed that the next regularly scheduled meeting on Nov. 17 would still be taking place.
According to university spokesperson Chris Mota, quorum for BoG meetings is 21, and the board is required to hold a minimum of five meetings during the academic year. She said that it was not unusual for at least one meeting a year to be cancelled.
Unsatisfied with the administration’s official answer, graduate student governor Erik Chevrier inquired further, and on Monday was told by Tessier that it looked like a number of governors couldn’t attend, though she never specified that number. She also reminded Chevrier that there are currently four vacancies on the BoG.
“I found out that the recommendation was made by her to the chair and the Executive committee to cancel the meeting,” said Chevrier. “I also asked her if it was mostly members of certain constituencies that couldn’t make it, but she said that was not relevant to the question of quorum.”
Concordia Student Union president and undergraduate governor Lex Gill, who sits on the Executive committee, wrote in an email that she was not consulted on the decision to cancel the meeting, but indicated that she had been unable to attend the committee’s most recent meeting.
Chevrier is awaiting his chance to present a motion to the BoG to increase transparency at the university’s highest governing body. The motion calls for, among other things, a question and answer period at the end of each BoG meeting, increased seating in the actual BoG meeting room, and permission for media such as CUTV to broadcast meetings live.
There was no time to discuss the motion at the September board meeting, and now due to the Oct. 20 meeting being cancelled, Chevrier’s motion has been pushed even further down the calendar to November.
Chevrier sent a tweaked version of the motion on Monday to the BoG’s Executive committee in the hopes of having discussion on the updated version added to the November meeting’s agenda. The modified motion was unanimously adopted at the Graduate Students’ Association Oct. 14 council meeting.
The new motion quotes several key passages from the external governance review committee’s report, a document that the Board of Governors has said it is committed to respecting. New items in the motion include calling on the board to follow the EGRC’s recommendation to place closed sessions at the end of the meeting. The closed session was held at the beginning of the Sept. 28 meeting, lasting for about 20 minutes.
The now cancelled Oct. 20 meeting was set to be the first BoG meeting to take place since undergraduate student representation on the board was voted to be decreased from four to one. That particular vote sparked outrage among students during the heated Sept. 28 meeting, where 27 governors voted through a secret ballot in support of diminishing the number of student governors.
Undergraduate governor AJ West wrote in an email on Monday that despite requests made by all four undergraduate representatives, none have yet to receive a clear answer as to why it was seen as reasonable for successive governance committees to recommend shrinking student representation on the BoG.
“Moving forward, we plan to formally request an explanation as to why some factions on the Board were weighed more when choosing the numbers,” he wrote. “We don’t need another lecture about how everyone is losing representation — they’re ignoring the question, which continues to be, ‘Why are we losing proportional representation?’”
