Tightening provincial funding may leave Ontario universities with budget shortfalls, and some workers at Brock University are not happy.
“This is at a crisis point for Brock. [Budget cuts]will be 5 per cent in each of the next four years,” said Dan Crow, president of CUPE 4207, which represents teaching assistants and contract instructors. “We think it is possible that we can have a budget with zero cuts and find other ways to actually make up that shortfall.”
With these budget cuts, many aspects of universities will change for the worse, Crow said.
“It will certainly have a negative impact on the quality of teaching and learning. It has the potential to create a devalued form of education,” Crow said. “They are proposing to cut back on the number of courses that are offered, class sizes are going to increase and reducing the numbers of hours at the library.”
Brock vice-president (finance and administration) Steve Pillar said the administration has been in close touch with students.
“We have had town hall meetings . . . and I have met with all of the student unions on campus and provided them information on what we are doing and why we are doing it,” Pillar said. “We not just looking at cuts to programs but enhances to revenue as well.”
Crow has organized a rally at Brock to protest these cuts and he wants a province-wide initiative to follow.
“The first thing that needs to be done is a joint campaign and it needs to be a province-wide one with people from every university to put pressure on the provincial government to put more funding in,” Crow said.
He also said the rally at Brock went very peacefully and successfully. “Our rally was to let the administration know that we don’t accept [cuts] and we want them to find a different way,” Crow said.
Jonah Butovsky, a sociology professor at Brock and the treasurer of the faculty union, spoke out at the rally advocating democracy.
“We need more democracy in the budgeting process more input from faculty, students, teaching assistants and staff who are only brought in at the end,” Butovsky said.
“Keeping everyone in the dark so Brock looks like everything is fine is not an appropriate way to run a public institution,” Butovsky said.
Crow said he has heard talks of the budget committee listening and adhering to the protesters. The budget effects will start in the spring term of this year, but Crow said the rallies and the letter campaign would continue for a long time.
“The only thing that you can do is mobilize and do what you believe to be right and continue to fight until you get the outcome you want and if it is a long time coming you keep pushing for it,” Crow said.