Subseries 2 - University Governance

0.6 m of textual records

In the early fall of 1969 I was elected as a faculty representative on the President’s Council, which was an advisory body made up of members of the Board of Governors, senior academic administrators, elected faculty members and a number of others.

The Commission on University Government, often referred to as CUG, reported in September, 1969 (see files 2 and 3) and two of the faculty members on the President’s
Council were asked to serve on a body called the CUG Programming Committee. Bob Spencer from the Department of History and I were selected. The Committee also included the president of the Association of Teaching Staff (ATS), Fred Winter of the Fine Art Department, the president of the Student’s Administrative Council, Gus Abols, and the President of the Graduate Students’ Association. I was chosen by the Committee to serve as Chair. (File 9). Both Bob Spencer and Gus Abols (a law student) probably thought that I would be reasonably neutral. I had much sympathy for the students’ desire for greater representation, but I also believed that the faculty should play the greater role in the running of the university and should have much stronger representation on any governing structure than the students. I liked the model chosen by the Faculty of Law which had recently added 10 students to the 30 faculty members on its Faculty Council (file 20).

Robin Ross, the vice -president and registrar of the University provided the administrative support for our endeavours and the University provided the necessary funds (file 11).

We met frequently throughout the academic year planning our activities (files 9 and 10). Our task was to find out what the University community wanted. Throughout this period, the ATS (renamed UTFA about this time) had many fiery meetings questioning our procedures (see file 13). We organised a large number of public meetings across the campus in which the issues were debated (file 12). We also arranged for a ‘Forum on CUG’ in the Bulletin (file 28).

We also received briefs and submissions from faculty members, administrators, students, staff, and alumni (files 14 to 19). A major task was to organise a questionnaire to test the views of the University community (files 21 to 23). The result of the questionnaire showed a desire for a university-wide committee to try to resolve the issues. (See file 24).

Throughout the spring of 1970 we arranged elections for 160 members of the University-Wide Committee, drawn from four estates: 40 faculty members, 40 students, 40 administrators, and 40 alumni, members of the Board of Governors, and others. In the end, the Board did not take up their allotted seats, and so the UWC consisted of 150 persons. (See files 29 to 36).

The Programming Committee worked out possible procedures for the UWC to follow, although the decision on procedures was theirs to decide (file 38).

The UWC met for two full days, June 2nd and 3rd, in the Macdonald Block of the Provincial Government. For much of the month of May, a steering committee drawn from members of the UWC representing the four estates worked out procedures. Archie Hallett, the new principal of University College, was selected as the chair of the UWC. (See files 39 to 41).

The UWC decided that a unicameral system should be adopted and that all four estates should be represented on the new governing body. But instead of parity between faculty and students as recommended by CUG, the faculty was to have a much greater proportion of the seats. (See file 42).

About a year later, the government introduced a bill setting out a unicameral system, with a greater proportion of faculty than students. I appeared before the legislative committee at the request of Acting President Jack Sword and outlined the background to the UWC recommendations. (See file 43). The main difference between the UWC recommendations and the eventual legislation was that non-university persons, including alumni, were to constitute half the new governing body. A further review of the unicameral system took place in 1987 by Edward Stansbury and recommended that unicameralism be continued with a number of changes (file 43).

The files are filled with letters and documents from important University people, including Claude Bissell, Laurie Chute (the dean of medicine), Bob Blackburn (the University Librarian), Ernest Sirluck (the dean of the graduate school), Brough McPherson, John Crispo, and many others.

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