Lisa Dawn Hamilton, the acting program director, told students about the potential cut in an email on Monday, CBC News reported.
''The dean of arts informed me today that due to decisions made in the budget process the university has cut the budget for the WGST program next year," Hamilton wrote.
Gloria Jollymore, Mount Allison's vice president of university advancement, insisted the school has “not announced any intention" to cut the program.
"Decisions on the status of any university program are not taken lightly. They require significant consultation and review," she said in a statement.
"Mount Allison has not initiated any type of formal review of this program or any other.”
Not announcing the program is being cut but cutting its funding is yet another example of the way our administration has been doing things for some time.
Having watched Mount Allison University evolve into the current model with its engineering and education departments gone, its revolving door of contract lecturers, increasing class sizes, and all too frequent strikes, I am not surprised at this latest action. During the first faculty strike a letter appeared in the Argosy with the following comment: “It seems that the board of regents and administration of Mount Allison are in agreement that if it wasn't for the professors and the students the university would be a pretty good place.”
The fiscal problems facing Mount Allison are common to most educational institutions today and they are very real. The tough realities of budget cuts may well require painful actions and so be it, but a university is not a corporation and should not be managed as such. Its administration is not a board of directors, and its president not a CEO responsible only to a group of shareholders. For the many thousands of still proud Mount A alumni and the future of our school, stop embarrassing us on the national stage. Develop transparent and inclusive policies and processes and eliminate the "we know what’s best” mentality that has pervaded the decision making here for far too long.
Yours truly,
Stephen Boorne
Sackville, N.B.
Lisa Dawn Hamilton, the acting program director, told students about the potential cut in an email on Monday, CBC News reported.
''The dean of arts informed me today that due to decisions made in the budget process the university has cut the budget for the WGST program next year," Hamilton wrote.
Gloria Jollymore, Mount Allison's vice president of university advancement, insisted the school has “not announced any intention" to cut the program.
"Decisions on the status of any university program are not taken lightly. They require significant consultation and review," she said in a statement.
"Mount Allison has not initiated any type of formal review of this program or any other.”
Not announcing the program is being cut but cutting its funding is yet another example of the way our administration has been doing things for some time.
Having watched Mount Allison University evolve into the current model with its engineering and education departments gone, its revolving door of contract lecturers, increasing class sizes, and all too frequent strikes, I am not surprised at this latest action. During the first faculty strike a letter appeared in the Argosy with the following comment: “It seems that the board of regents and administration of Mount Allison are in agreement that if it wasn't for the professors and the students the university would be a pretty good place.”
The fiscal problems facing Mount Allison are common to most educational institutions today and they are very real. The tough realities of budget cuts may well require painful actions and so be it, but a university is not a corporation and should not be managed as such. Its administration is not a board of directors, and its president not a CEO responsible only to a group of shareholders. For the many thousands of still proud Mount A alumni and the future of our school, stop embarrassing us on the national stage. Develop transparent and inclusive policies and processes and eliminate the "we know what’s best” mentality that has pervaded the decision making here for far too long.
Yours truly,
Stephen Boorne
Sackville, N.B.
