Opposition to the closure of Canada’s only women’s university is growing with a protest planned for Tuesday and faculty associations accusing Western University of a lack of transparency. Students, staff and alumni of Brescia University College, one of Western University’s three affiliated colleges in London, Ont., said they felt blindsided by the recent decision to wind down campus operations next year.
“I don’t think anyone likes the way it come about,” said Emma McBean, a first-year student and co-president of the Brescia Preservation Alliance, which formed in response to the Sept. 21 announcement. “When we accepted offers to Brescia, if they had been transparent to us that (the university) would cease to exist in a year, we would have made a different choice.”
The group is planning a protest on campus Tuesday beginning at 10 a.m. Brescia, home to 1,200 students, will be fully integrated into Western as of next May. The presidents of both Brescia and Western have vowed that programs and staff will be preserved.
“We understand news of the proposed integration was surprising to many members of our community and they are dealing with difficult feelings at this time. Moving forward, our topmost priority is to listen to and collaborate with our community members to achieve our shared vision,” Brescia President Lauretta Frederking told the Star.
Administration has since been meeting with students and faculty, she added, and Western has established a steering committee to ensure a successful transition. The Provost’s office has also created an advisory committee that will include student representation. The alliance hopes to stop the merger, or at the very least preserve what they say is Brescia’s legacy, through creating safe spaces for women to gather and opportunities to support women in leadership.
The group’s first protest on Sept. 27 attracted students, alumni, members from Western’s other affiliated university colleges (Huron and King’s), as well as faculty associations. The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) and the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) have expressed concerns over a lack of dialogue with the Brescia and Western faculty associations and the university senate, which exercises authority on academic matters.
“It is astounding that the administrations of Brescia and Western could have reached an agreement that includes plans to shift programs and reassign academic staff without consulting with the faculty associations,” CAUT’s executive director David Robinson wrote to Western President Alan Shepard and Brescia’s Frederking.
OCUFA said in a statement on Oct. 3 that “the move reflects the increasing attacks on collegial governance at Ontario universities through top-down non-consultative management from corporate-style University Boards and administrations.
“This announcement is a big step away from the established and functional model of collegial governance that ensures our universities are run effectively, transparently, and in line with the academic mission of an institution.”
In a statement to the Star, Western said the university is committed to the process of collegial governance, “which is why we’ve created a non-binding resolution to begin the process of consulting with our communities, in hopes of coming to a successful agreement. Approaching it this way allowed us to make a commitment up front that creates some certainty for Brescia students, faculty and staff.”
On the day of the announcement, Frederking told the Star that times had changed, with more women than men now attending post-secondary education. In the 1960s, there were 280 universities for women in North America; today there are 26. “We’re looking forward to changing with those times,” she said. Plans include enhancing a preparatory admissions program for equity-deserving groups on the Brescia campus and creating a $25-million legacy fund to support access to education. Western will assume all of Brescia assets and liabilities.
Shepard and Frederking said staff would be offered positions at Western where Brescia’s programs would continue to be offered until the last Brescia student has graduated. That’s not good enough, said McBean, who wants the education, in the setting, she signed up and paid for. She said students choose to study and live on the close-knit Brescia campus because it is a safe space for women and particularly accessible for those with disabilities. (Men are able to take classes there, but their ratio is very low.) She also noted the university boasts smaller class sizes and feels less intimidating.
“Students, myself included, feel we might get lost in the sea of Western.”
McBean and her alliance co-president Alex Wild have met with Frederking demanding the creation of a Brescia community centre, female-only spaces on campus and programs in women’s leadership. But that’s only if they can’t stop the merger from happening in the first place.
“This is obviously a hard time and a lot of us are grieving,” said McBean.
Source: Toronto Star
