COLLEGIAL GOVERNANCE — MYTH BUSTED

Tessa Vanderhart, staff

University president Emöke Szathmáry could not have concluded her Sept. 6 article in the Bulletin more aptly when she wrote, “On the Character of the University”: “A fundamental faith that intellectual ability abides in all peoples of the world is also characteristic of the University of Manitoba — a cultural attribute that has long defined its character, and set it apart from others. I hope that the new professors, the new students and new support staff will take pride in knowing that they have joined a great university whose culture differs from the rest. Everyone’s actions matter here because each is like a thrown stone, generating ripples on our society’s pond, spreading to shoreline and changing what was there.”

This is an excellent, if poetic, description of collegial governance, one of the founding myths of universities. Like Canada, the U of M is bicameral. We have a Board of Governors, comprised of experienced businesspeople, prominent community members, and elected university community members, that sets a vision and approves the university’s finances. Then we have a Senate, populated by more than 100 academic deans and directors, as well as elected professors and students. Senate is the academic body of the U of M. As put succinctly in the University of Manitoba Act, “The Senate has general charge of all matters of an academic character; and, without restricting the generality of the foregoing, the senate shall” proceed to do no less than 32 listed duties, most of which were violated in the university’s decision, this past December, to sign a binding agreement with Navitas to create the International College of Manitoba (ICM) on this campus. But after this decision, does Senate still have a role in collegial governance?

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has gone so far as to give up on senates. “After 40 years of disappointment, we must accept the limitations of what senate can achieve and put our faith in collective bargaining as the best means to ensure collegial governance in Canadian universities,” Janice Best wrote, arguing that in her experience at Acadia University, the university administration, and especially collective agreements, had taken over powerful responsibilities such as choosing how tenure is awarded, strategic planning, and quality evaluation.

This is not surprising in the case of the University of Manitoba. Smaller councils have taken up the role of the forum — most of the arguments against ICM were hashed out at the Arts Faculty council, not at Senate, just as most of the details of the agreement were delineated between vice-president (academic) Robert Kerr and Navitas. Dean of Arts Richard Sigurdson even cited, at both the Board of Governors and Senate, the lively debate at the Arts council as a reason why further debate was not necessary at either of these legally recognized (and therefore dangerous) bodies.

Commerce dean Glenn Feltham, a member of Senate, said that he thinks collegial governance at the U of M is highly effective. “Within any university there will always be some level of tension, particularly when people don’t understand fully the limits of different entities, such as the Senate. So in those areas which are both administrative as well as relating to the academic mission, it becomes more difficult . . . who should make the decision and how that decision should be made,” Feltham conceded.

But what really matters, he said, is trust — trust, from Senate, that the administration is doing, and will continue to do, “the right thing.” While admitting that this trust is not perfect, he maintained that the collegial atmosphere of debate at U of M — namely, keeping the discussion academic and not personal — is in fine shape, can be learned from, even.

The University of Manitoba Faculty Association (UMFA), isn’t quite so sure. In its 2006 submission to the presidential search committee, UMFA called a commitment to collegial governance “fundamental” for a new president. In addition to a strengthened Senate, “Collegial governance requires a commitment to transparency. Agreements with third parties such as the Monsanto Corporation, the Asper Foundation, Apotex, and Clayton Riddell, should be available to and reviewed by Senate to provide input on the merits and conditions on such agreements,” the submission continued.

For chemistry professor Phil Hultin — “no friend of UMFA’s,” he surreptitiously declared at the Feb. 6 Senate meeting — the violation of the University of Manitoba Act giving Senate the right to determine policy for all non-staff education on campus severely harmed collegial governance. “By committing the University to this unprecedented academic experiment without any prior consultation, the Administration is effectively marginalizing Senate, contrary to the tenor of the Act,” he wrote in a heated e-mail to me, the only response to many sent requesting positions on this question.

Maybe that’s part of the problem. The Manitoban reported on raucous Senate meetings in the 1970s, but university secretary Jeff Leclerc, a member of Senate for four years and its nonpartisan organizer for seven more, who remembers when the Manitoban office was UMSU council chambers, says that he can’t recall Senate ever being more powerful, or demanding the powers that some claim it has let atrophy. Nor, he said, does he agree with the idea that smaller forums are, or should be, taking over part of this role.

“When I’m orienting new senators, I make sure they know that Senate is what you make of it,” he emphasized. Undoubtedly, that is true.

“It’s really not my place to comment; I really shouldn’t say,” Leclerc repeated when asked if the ICM debacle diminished the role of Senate. “You can ask any number of people, deans, professors, but it’s really not my place.”

Unfortunately, president Szathmáry, who expressed huge amounts of frustration at meetings regarding ICM — going so far as to call questioners “liars” on Jan. 9 — is also not in a place to comment on the health of collegial governance at the university, being chair of Senate and a non-voting member of the Board. However, it is infinitely more unfortunate that no one has made it their duty to stand up for it, as she once did.