The Rest Of The Reps
Concordia’s undergraduates might be on the verge of raising hell because of the proposed changes to the Board of Governors’ bylaws—which aim to reduce their representation—but they aren’t the only ones affected.
One large group that will see its role change is the school’s part-time faculty, who currently don’t have a voting seat. The group is represented by a single observer with speaking rights, a position currently held by Jean Freed.
“I have the right to speak and ask questions, but I do not vote and that is unacceptable for many, many reasons,” said Freed. “We teach close to half of all student course hours, yet we have no actual voting representation, which is a real problem.”
That will change if the new bylaws are adopted, however—part-time faculty is slated to get a voting seat.
According to Freed, having the ability to vote will help towards legitimizing the concerns of part-time faculty members, a group that does not garner the respect they feel they deserve.
“It’s a big improvement for part-time faculty. I’m still concerned that many of the full-time faculty do not seem to consider us to be faculty, but hopefully that’s changing and they’ll come around in that regard.”
While the part-time faculty gains a vote, the full-time faculty stands to lose one, going from six to five. However, due to the Board’s overall reduction in size from 40 to 25, they will see an actual increase in their proportional representation.
There is one unforeseen side effect of that: currently, there are three reps for Arts and Science, and one each for Fine Arts, the John Molson School of Business and Engineering and Computer Science. Under the proposed new numbers, Arts and Science would only have two representatives.
Nina Howe, who is one of the current governors from the Arts and Science faculty, said that this drop represents a similar concern to that of the undergraduate students.
“Certainly the faculty representation, our representation is going down from three members to two. We are 60 per cent of the university in the faculty of Arts and Science, so of course I worry about that.”
While both Freed and Howe expressed sympathy with the undergraduate students, graduate student governor Erik Chevrier said that despite his constituency holding steady at one vote, “Our position would be to have as much student representation in proportion as there is right now.
“Proportionally we go up, but in general the student’s proportion goes down. Graduate students, even though there is an increase in proportion, it doesn’t change very drastically for us.”While Chevrier expressed qualms about reducing the size of the board at the price of democracy, Freed and Howe both opined that a smaller Board would be better able to run the university.
“I think hopefully it will streamline things a bit,” said Freed. “I think having fewer governors is probably a good idea, because I think that people will be more involved, but that is indeed an assumption, so let’s hope we’re all correct.”
Also affected will be those who are part of Concordia’s pension plan. Under the current bylaws, the pensioners have a non-voting observer who is allowed to speak on matters that directly affect that constituency.
Under the changed bylaws, that position will be eliminated entirely. The Link could not reach William Knitter, the current observer, for comment.
