Kim Bolan
Vancouver Sun
Friday, August 15, 1997
Page B1
The organization representing Canada's university instructors escalated its boycott of the new Technical University of B.C. today, placing a newspaper ad warning that the university does not offer protections for academic freedom.
The move by the Canadian Association of University Teachers is its first public act since it announced the boycott July 25.
The ad, which appears on page E3 of today's Vancouver Sun, states: "Academic staff and administrators contemplating employment at the Technical University of B.C. should know that the legislation creating this institution does not offer protection for academic freedom and institutional autonomy contained in other university statutes."
"The CAUT believes that without such protections, academic staff will not have an effective and assured role in determining and directing teaching and research at TechBC."
The association says the problem with the university is that it will not have an academic senate and that its board has extraordinary power to establish, change or discontinue programs or program areas of the university without provision for the fair treatment of employees.
And it says the board is setup to be dominated by non-academic appointees without the usual requirements of the University Act regarding quorums, the removal of non-attending members or the exclusion of politicians or bureaucrats from the board.
Association president Bill Bruneau said the instructors, who are urging their colleagues around the world not to accept positions at TechBC, have had no cooperation from government or the university's interim board in resolving their concerns.
"We will never give up. I don't care how long it takes," said Bruneau, who is leaving shortly for Europe, where he has set up meetings with colleagues in London and Paris to discuss the boycott.
Bruneau, who was an New Democratic Party school trustee in Vancouver from 1990-93, said the government's position on TechBC violates the NDP's party policy on academic freedom.
TechB.C. chair Ron Dickson said the ad campaign is unfortunate, but he said it won't have much impact on the hiring getting under way by the new Surrey-based university, which will start offering classes in September, 1998.
He said he hoped to meet with the instructors to reassure them measures are in place to guarantee academic freedom.
"I don't think their campaign will have staying power," he said. "We expect to have some very well-respected faculty."