A Contentious Senate Meeting

A contentious Senate meeting on Thursday, March 27, left many members of the Queen’s community reeling. Originally scheduled as a hybrid session, the meeting was moved online at the last minute. In response to a query by a faculty member, the administration said they chose to make this change because they had learned of a large undergraduate campus demonstration and wished to “avoid disruption and avoid any safety concerns.” The senior leadership team seems unwilling to witness the level of upset among undergraduates impacted by their rogue behaviour over the last three weeks. 

What follows is a summary of key items discussed at the meeting.

Grading Policy

During the routine approval of the agenda, Senator Kyla Tienhaara proposed a motion to add an item. This motion would have set aside time to discuss whether the Senate wished to affirm that existing academic regulations concerning grading be upheld in the context of the PSAC 901 strike. When speaking to the motion, the Senator noted great confusion among instructors and students in response to messaging prohibiting the assignment of GD (Grade Deferred) marks and insisting that CR (Credit Standing) grades be used instead. CR is a grade notation that must be requested by a student, not imposed by an instructor, head or dean, according to current regulations.

It was the most benign of motions: a proposition to simply affirm that existing academic procedures pertaining to grading would be followed. However, one by one, the Deans of the Faculties of Engineering, Arts and Science, Health Sciences, and Education, along with the Provost, lined up to oppose the motion. They were joined by a handful of other Senators who spoke against the university following its own, longstanding procedures. Some opponents believed that this motion pertained only to the Faculty of Arts and Science and that the Senate was not the appropriate jurisdiction for the motion. Others expressed points of view that suggested they saw the motion as encouraging the use of GD marks in their faculty, when in fact, the motion simply affirmed that GD marks would remain an option, as they currently are, according to existing academic regulations.  

Although the motion was amended to refer more narrowly to academic procedures in the Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS), and several Senators made impassioned cases in favour of the motion and the administrative academic integrity it affirmed, it failed to pass and was not introduced into the agenda for a later vote. Apparently, a majority of Senators find it unnecessary to follow university procedures. This opens up an existential question about what it means for the primary governing body of an institution to vote down a motion calling for it to follow its own rules–without proposing alternative rules it might follow. 

After the vote, Vice Provost of Teaching and Learning Gavan Watson was invited to clear up the confused messaging coming from the FAS Faculty Office, in particular, that some Senators had referenced in their remarks. Watson stated: “Any guidance that comes from the Academic Operations Committee (AOC) is guidance; it’s given to faculties and schools to localize decision making.” With this clarification, Watson undermined the claims of the FAS deanery, made repeatedly over the past few weeks, that they are receiving directions about grading options from the AOC. Instead, we now understand that the decision to prioritize CR marks and prohibit GD marks is being imposed by the FAS Dean’s Office.

Academic Freedom in Authoritarian Times

The Senate then proceeded with the Principal’s remarks: Patrick Deane spoke about the assault on academic freedom at Columbia University in the United States. His conclusion seemed to be that such assaults were unacceptable, and he lamented the circumstances that had created such a dire situation. He seemed unfazed by assaults on academic freedom at Queen’s, including denying an instructor the right to assign the grades they deem appropriate to a student’s work.  Later, in response to a comment from a Senator, the Provost returned to the situation at Columbia, suggesting that Queen’s might have to follow their lead and compromise its academic mission in order to retain government funding. 

Seat Re-Allocation

From here, the Provost took the floor, making the stunning announcement that he will be removing an additional 200 seats from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and redistributing them to other faculties. (He is also diverting 100 seats within FAS away from the humanities and social sciences.)

The Provost argued that FAS is not generating the level of income necessary to sustain itself and repeatedly used the word “subsidy” to describe its budget allocation from central funds. The removal of seats from FAS is an attempt to address what the Provost has stated is a large deficit in the university’s operating costs, even though this move will make it infinitely harder for FAS to address its assigned deficit. The increased revenues of $1.4 million would only produce an increase of 0.18%t in the university’s total operating revenues ($780 million last year), raising questions about the urgency of reallocating these seats before the consultation process of the Bicentennial Vision is complete. Unless, of course, the Bicentennial Vision is simply a republic relations exercise to provide cover for already decided plans.

When questioned by a Senator about whether the removal of 200 student seats from FAS would necessitate redistribution to support FAS, the Provost opined how the University was in a unique situation where it had no choice but was “forced to subsidize” the Faculty of Arts and Science and speculated on whether other faculties and parts of the university would ultimately want to continue to do so. 

The Senator followed up by noting that, as a university, we are all “forced” to support central services like the Library and the upper administration. Rather than affirming the point that university units are interdependent, the Provost remarked that while some may think the administration is superfluous, he himself would not wish to participate in such an experiment. 

Another Senator questioned whether the existing budget model contributed to creating the conditions for a concentrated deficit in one faculty, but the Provost denied that the model plays a significant role. This directly contradicts the Principal’s previous comments at Senate and the discussion paper that he published shortly after his appointment. For example, at a special Senate meeting in January 2024, Principal Deane explained that “If you look at the situation in Arts and Science it is clear that were a different budget model in place, and here I am talking about things such as contributions of the faculties to central services and issues of that sort, something of the challenge which faces Arts and Sciences could be addressed through rethinking the budget model.” It also directly contradicts the advice of Huron Consulting Group which was commissioned by the University to advise them on their budget model.

PSAC Strike

There was much discussion about the current PSAC 901 strike throughout the meeting. Most saliently, a number of Senators pressed the Provost on why the administration is refusing to return to the bargaining table even though PSAC has expressed willingness to continue negotiations. The Provost denied that PSAC, the members of which he repeatedly referred to as “part-time workers”* had made any such moves, thus echoing claims made in the administration’s Labour News Updates since the strike began. 

When skillfully and gracefully questioned by Senator Tienhaara, who insisted that PSAC had indeed informed the administration of their eagerness to continue bargaining, the Provost changed tack, arguing that PSAC had not used the appropriate channels to register their desire to return to the table. The proper process, the Provost claimed, was for PSAC to notify the conciliator assigned to the case of their willingness to resume bargaining—something PSAC had failed to do. 

In a dramatic moment later in the meeting, Senator Tienhaara presented evidence from PSAC that showed that the union had in fact informed both the administration and the conciliator of their desire to return to the table. At that point, the Provost claimed that he had no information about that, although one presumes that the administration’s bargaining team is in contact with and taking directions from the Provost. 

Are we to assume extreme incompetence on the part of the administration’s communications team? Or is it the case that the Provost is willing to lie in order to maintain the fiction that PSAC continues to hold up the process of negotiating a settlement? We leave that to you, dear readers, to decide for yourselves, but in our opinion, neither alternative inspires any confidence.

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* The Provost continues to insist on referring to PSAC as part time workers. Graduate students work as TAs, RAs or TFs part time because they are full time students. Only full time students are eligible for a TAship, RAship or TFship. Moreover, Ontario law limits the number of hours a graduate student may engage in paid labour in the university. When the Provost refers to PSAC workers as part time he seems to want to imply that they have other opportunities of income generation at their disposal. However, as full time students they are obliged to devote most of their time to their studies to meet their program milestones; indeed, that is why the law limits their number of hours of paid labour. The Provost’s continued emphasis on their part-time work status is deceptive and irresponsible. However, it does underline that any per hour pay raise PSAC may achieve needs to be calibrated within their overall funding support as full time students to ensure that their grant funding does not decrease should their wages increase.