Crisis of Culture in BoG
Just before the holidays, the departure of Concordia’s president, Judith Woodsworth, was made known before anyone had time to object. This marks the latest in a series of “departures” by presidents and vice-presidents in a very short period. It is increasingly obvious that the Board of Governors is at the center of it all.
Whatever one thinks of Woodsworth’s performance, such departures are unacceptable since they demonstrate that real power lies exclusively with the Board—who are not even subject to the checks and balances of the university.
We know that corporate figures hold a place of privilege on the Board, and that behind closed doors their “invisible hand” increasingly runs the university like a corporation, following the imperatives of wealth and not of knowledge.
Should we continue to dole out millions at the Board’s whim? Should we accept their lack of transparency, their threats, buyouts and destabilizing of the university’s functioning? Should we accept their contempt for the university’s mission and their cynical pursuit of profit?
We, the graduate students of the sociology and anthropology department, have declared that we will not accept the course charted by the Board. It is not enough that those Board members who accepted the decisions should have to resign; the internal culture of the Board must be understood and the structures that permit these crises to recur must be changed. As sociology and anthropology graduates, we are proposing to set up a research group that would do just that.
It is up to each of us to take action through our student representatives resisting this corporate incursion, and to declare ourselves students, not clients.
—Richard Hinton,
on behalf of the Sociology and Anthropology Student Association
This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 21, published February 1, 2011.
