On November 7 I attended McGill’s annual joint meeting of the Board of Governors and Senate. The theme was “Exploring Transformations to Adapt to New Opportunities and Challenges Facing McGill”. Maryse Bertrand, chair of the Board of Governors, and President Deep Saini spent about 10 minutes bantering about whether transformation was “needed” or “imperative”. I’m only a lowly undergraduate student, and so maybe nuance is going over my head, but I fail to see how these synonyms are meaningfully different.
I found the premise confusing. I don’t understand how we can be pro- or anti- change without knowing what these changes are. Sure, McGill will transform, but these transformations are not value neutral. What are our goals? The rhetoric of progress for progress’s sake is corporate-coded and reminds me of a book recently featured on the podcast ‘If Books Could Kill’ called Who Moved My Cheese? The book’s message is to be grateful for opportunities created by change, as a general concept. In practice, it’s used to repress complaints about unfair working conditions or illegal layoffs.
The last point in Deep Saini’s introductory remarks was a call for everyone at the university to start taking responsibility. He wanted us to move past the myth that it’s senior administration who bears the duty for McGill’s success. President Saini has seemed extremely unenthused when members of the McGill community have risen to that call. He was certainly not a fan of the encampment, or the many protests on campus, or conversation at Senate about campus security, or faculty’s unionization efforts. If Deep Saini is expressing a desire for a more communal approach to university governance, I wholeheartedly agree, but I wonder instead if his words are a plea for us to stop complaining.
The entire series of presentation seemed designed to soft-launch “cost-saving” measures at the expense of smaller programs or initiatives not directly related to academics. Chris Buddle started his presentation by saying that he argues everyday with people about how everything has costs. He spent the next several slides “just asking questions” about whether it could be worth it to remove programs with less than 20 students enrolled. A short while later, Vice President Labeau commented that small classrooms are empty about 50 per cent of the time. Buddle stressed that non active programs or courses could be ‘reactivated’ if there was interest, but I do wonder how interest about a non-existent program can be ascertained, if it cannot be enrolled in or applied for. I did enjoy his reference of “those of us in the James building”. I wonder if, in the spirit of blaming senior administrators less, we should relocate their offices to various buildings on campus.
During the question period, faculty expressed concern about burnout among their marginalized members and the cutting of smaller, less profitable programs. One Senator asked about the risks of a “mean and lean” approach, and as an example, “slashing poetry and beefing up corporate law”. We’re not slashing, was the response. Rather, it’s “careful reflection”. I’ve seen many questions dodged by reprimanding the question asker for hyperbolic wording. But the answer is clear: yes, program cutting is how we will save money, and yes, you should be worried.
In his concluding remarks, Deep Saini equated academic excellence and reputation. I think that’s actually a big assumption. I fear for student services, or small, experimental classes that do not earn us rankings in McLean’s or that earn Deep Saini bragging points with his Harvard buddies.
I don’t like to be paranoid, but, especially as Deep Saini concluded his speech with a request that “today [..] we start trusting each other”, I am worried that we are being manipulated into uninformed consent for the neoliberal-izing of McGill. I think we must reject the call to unconditionally embrace transformation, but that we do energetically take up the call for community responsibility to determine the destination.