Gaslighting, the politics of budgets, concerns about surveillance, and more

On Thursday, April 17, Queen’s Senate had a meeting that dealt with budgetary issues, fallout from the PSAC 901 strike, the shrinking of the Bachelor of Arts program, and how Deans are appointed.

A win, and a note about gaslighting and the politics of budgets

The Provost’s budget update largely focused on scapegoating the Faculty of Arts and Science in preparation for his argument about transferring seats out of the BA program in FAS. But he also included a short note about the Board of Trustees increasing the use of investment income for operating expenses from the Pooled Investment Fund from $5.2 million to $10 million. This means $4.8 million less pressure to lay off workers and cut vital student services.

Those following QCAA’s work will know that this change was one of our first demands, articulated in our December 2023 Shock Doctrine report and reiterated consistently since then. At the time, this proposal was met with claims from the administration that such an increase would “not be responsible” or was akin to drawing down your RRSP for short-term spending. These arguments were then repeated ad nauseam at department meetings, town halls, and Senate. Yet, once a special committee of the Board of Trustees sat down to actually consider the idea, they realized that a measured increase in the use of investment income could be a stable source of funding in balancing the budget.

We don’t recount this as an ‘I told you so’ but as something for the Queen’s community to consider going forward. Reasonable positions have been, and continue to be, met with gaslighting and appeals to supposed expertise or ‘common sense’ in efforts to paint these positions as naive and uninformed. When we take budgets as a given fact, rather than the outcome of a series of political decisions, we lose our ability to advocate for a better future for the university.

The lesson here is that without people speaking up, it is unlikely that this issue would have been brought to the attention of the university community, and that this increase in revenue for operating (which is far larger than the increase in revenue for the seat transfers that occurred at Senate) would have taken place.

Budgets are political and must be scrutinized and resisted when different courses of action provide opportunities to build a more just university.

Strike fallout

Since the Senate meeting took place at the same time that PSAC 901 was voting on ratification, the resolution of the strike was a focus of Senator questioning. This covered two important areas:

1. The use of private security on campus to monitor PSAC was of concern to both faculty and student senators, with one Senator sharing a report that security had followed students off campus. The Provost was unable to provide a figure for the total cost of hiring private security. Even more concerningly, neither the Provost nor the Principal would commit to deleting the surveillance data that these firms had gathered on students, staff, and faculty, stating they didn’t have enough information on the issue. With student activists now targets of state violence and deportations in the US and elsewhere, the potential malicious uses of such data make its ongoing preservation a serious concern.  

2. How to repair the broken relationship between the administration and graduate students was another topic of conversation related to the strike. The Provost seemed offended by the framework of the discussion, claiming that the university had made no mistakes during the strike (despite corrections being issued for communication around grading). Rather than taking the opportunity to build bridges, the administration seemed to opt for ongoing hostility, with the Provost launching into a long explanation of his statement made at the previous Senate meeting, that PSAC had not properly responded to one of the administration’s offers. 

Transfer of seats from and within the Faculty of Arts (FAS) and Science

 The most controversial item on the agenda was the transfer of 200 seats from the FAS to Commerce, Engineering and Health Sciences (all taken from the BA program) and the reallocation of 100 seats within the FAS from the BA program to Computing, Kinesiology, and Life Sciences.

This transfer has been the subject of two special meetings of the FAS faculty board. At the second meeting on April 14th, the faculty board decided (with 91 votes in favour and no votes against) to give advice to Senate that they should refuse the transfer of seats until a cost-benefit analysis was undertaken, strategic planning processes were completed, and protection of equity-related programs was assured.

While the transfer ultimately passed, many Senators pointed out during the meeting that the implications of dropping the enrollment in BA programs by 20 percent do not appear to have been considered by the Senior Leadership Team. Despite program suspensions being on the agenda of this very Senate meeting, the Provost stated that programs were nearly impossible to close, that tenure protections prevented him from shuttering programs, and that there is therefore no reason to think this decision would result in program closures.

Senators also raised questions about why the university community is spending so much time providing feedback for the Bicentennial Vision, including through special initiatives such as the Future of the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Group and a Board/Senate retreat if the administration was always going to transfer these seats without proper planning and consultation. The Provost’s and Principal’s answers made it clear that no academic planning had gone into the decision to transfer seats and, by implication, that the move is driven purely by austerity rather than educational logics

Appointment of deans and a delayed meeting

In discussing these issues, Senate went well over time. Still on the agenda was a discussion of a proposed new process to appoint deans, who, as Senators highlighted, would concentrate far more power in the administration to control such appointments than they have at other Ontario universities. This and other motions will be taken up at a May Senate meeting.