First things first: we’re all relieved that the FAS academic plan is on its way out. The plan, as we all know, was an ill-conceived disaster — and I use the term (dis+astrum, literally from the stars) deliberately, because the plan was dropped on us from above, without rationale, and nobody saw it coming. At present, as CUPE Liasion Officer Patrick Vitale put it, “the plan is lying in shambles on the floor,” and Dean Meric Gertler is asking FAS members to put forward alternative proposals, some of which have already proven far superior to anything imagined by Gertler’s secret Strategic Planning Committee. It turns out, the dean confesses, there was really no reason to amalgamate five departments into one mega-School of Languages and Literatures, and no reason to close three graduate centres of international renown. Dean Gertler has said he’s sorry some worry-wart constituents “lost nights of sleep” over this plan, but we should rest assured: it’s all over now.
But questions remain. First, how did we get here? Where did such a bad plan come from, and why did it take this long for the dean to drop it? Second, how can we make sure our faculty doesn’t repeat this draining exercise in counter-productivity?
Dean Gertler’s newly adopted version of events, which he tried out at the A&S Council meeting and in the faculty-wide memo released November 05, goes something like this: Step 1) the SPC asked for reports from every FAS unit on how they could “grow without growth” (aka live with less money) over the coming five-year period. Step 2) The SPC met in secret for 200-odd hours, pouring over the proposals and putting them together into an academic plan. Step 3) The SPC released its plan, which was really a misnomer, because it was just a series of “proposals” the dean wanted everybody to discuss. Step 4) We discussed the proposals, and the dean realized they were pretty bad and universally disliked, and decided to go with alternative proposals instead.
Dean Gertler’s new story reminds me of what the narrator said in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest: “It’s the truth, even if it didn’t happen.” That may be the case in the insane asylum where Cuckoo’s Nest occurs, but here, at a world-class university, let us not rewrite history. Let us tell the truth about what happened in a planning process that divided students, staff, and faculty from their administrators; provoked international outcry and rebuke of the University of Toronto; prompted an ongoing legal grievance against the university; and threatened the reputation and viability of the humanities on our campus.
The facts tell a different story from the dean’s. True, the SPC asked for reports from every FAS unit. No one knows what went on in the SPC meetings (except the handful of SPC members — and they’re not talking!), but one thing that’s evident is that the academic plan was not drafted from close readings of unit reports. Not a single report recommended departmental amalgamations, centre closures, or a new school. Those were the unprompted innovations of the SPC, and they were put into the plan with no warning to, and no consultation with, the units involved. No students were on the SPC, although improving student experience was frequently mentioned as the raison d’etre for the plan. No staff members were on the SPC either, although the money saved by cutting their jobs was the main budgetary justification of the plan. However hard the dean now tries to work the term “consultative” into his descriptions of the planning process, the record shows that nobody was consulted during the drafting of the plan, and the suggestions each unit actually did submit were ignored.
Case in point: Dean Gertler now says that the best example of “alternative proposals” is the one that would link the Centre for Comparative Literature to the undergrad program in Literary Studies to create a new unit at Victoria. In fact, this merger was suggested already in the document Comparative Literature sent to the SPC, before the academic plan was even written. Apparently it was a bad idea then, but it’s a great one now.
The academic plan was announced at the end of June and made fully public at the beginning of July. Dean Gertler’s claim that the plan was never really a “plan” but consisted only of proposals is absolutely false. Let me quote from the first announcement we received: “The School [of Languages and Literatures] will have a single Director and centralized administrative services; individual language groups will retain responsibility for their undergraduate and graduate programs. The specific structure and operating principles of the School will be determined through a process of consultation.” The obvious message here is: the School will be created (centres and departments will be closed, admin staff will be fired), and the consultation process will only address how these changes will occur.
In preparation for the fait accompli of the plan, students received an email from Vice-Dean Rob Baker addressing questions such as “How will my new transcript look?” and “What will happen to my supervisor?” This email also reminded students of Comparative Literature that their centre would close on July 1, 2011. It’s pretty strange to name a date for something you’re not sure will happen. Additionally, Comparative Literature was told not to admit new students this fall, because it was definitely closing, even though “consultation” hadn’t even begun. Staff members were advised by the dean in a general meeting to start looking for new jobs, because job cuts were definitely happening, although the dean had not yet even met with representatives of the staff’s union, USW 1998. Incidentally, the dean first called a meeting with staff members and declined to invite their union leaders. The staff refused to attend unless the full union leadership was present.
Dean Gertler gave numerous statements to newspapers and academic journals and, in each case, he used the language of inevitability. I encourage you to go back and re-read these articles, noticing that the journalists typically refer to “proposals” and use conditional verb tenses (what would happen, according to the plan), while the dean uniformly uses the declarative (what will happen). As recently as October’s town-hall meetings, the dean was unflagging in his defense of the plan against rowdy criticism, refusing to back down on any of its major points.
The truth is that Dean Gertler had no intention of modifying any part of the plan. The academic plan was never up for discussion, and it did not, as the dean would have it, morph into a modified version through collegial collaboration. The plan is now dead for one reason only: students, staff, and faculty killed it through concerted and unified opposition — not with the dean’s cooperation, but despite his best efforts to save the plan and quiet the opposition. Dean Gertler now has substantial work to do restoring trust and collegiality in FAS and confidence in his capacity to occupy the Deanship. To this end, an important step will be the dean’s admission that the planning exercise he oversaw was a catastrophe that seriously threatened the integrity of FAS (note: he still defends the process) and his willingness to meet with relevant parties in commitment to a different process for future planning. I urge him to do so, and I urge The Varsity’s readers not to quiet down until he does.
Ryan Culpepper is a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar at the Centre for Comparative Literature
