Category Archives: Budgets

#UBC time to lay down the mace in graduation and governance #ubcnews #bced #highered

*Apologies to the medievalists again. Customized below is our semi-annual appeal to UBC managers to Lay Down the Mace:

As we count down to and roll through graduation, can we please remove the mace from convocation and governance at the University of British Columbia? The mace had its day in the first 100 years of this esteemed University but that day has gone.

Dalhousie University is currently embroiled in controversy over its mace, decorated as it is to demonstrate racial supremacy (“the rose, thistle, fieur-de-lys, and shamrock, depicting the major racial groups of our country”). Indigenous peoples and advocates have said enough already.

Some traditions just aren’t worth maintaining…

At the Nexo Knights’ Graduation Day,

Jestro grabbed a sword, a mace, and a spear and began to juggle them… The unimpressed crowd started to boo… Sweat broke out on his forehead…. He let go of the mace, and it flew across the arena. The crowd gasped and ducked… Then … bam! It hit the power grid on the arena wall. The area lights flickered, then turned off. Soon the power outage surged throughout the city.

Yes, this really did happen in a Lego story! And in England, Bradford College faculty members called the admin’s decision to spend £24,000 on a new mace for graduation ceremonies a “crass bit of judgement.”

At UBC, things were questionable again this past year. With an opportunity to follow faculty and staff members’ and students’ proposal to divest from fossil fuel investments, in mid February UBC chose to continue to be a part of the problem of climate change instead of the solution. Still heavily invested. And after chalking up a $22m budget surplus, in April & May UBC jumped the line at Wholefoods to draw $7,230 in grocery bag donations. On 24 April an Open Letter signed by 110 faculty members was submitted to the UBC Chancellor Reappointment Committee questioning the process.

The days of the mace in Convocation and governance are of the past and that part of the past is no longer worth reenacting.

It’s difficult to know where this University now stands or what it stands for.

It is time to retire the mace, symbol of aggression, authority, and war. It’s time to march to graduation ceremonies in late May and November with open and empty hands as symbolic of peace and reconciliation of controversies and roles of the President’s Office.

UBC’s mace is a relic but a relic of what? The mace is symbolic speech but what is it saying about us now?

From ancient times, this club, this weapon of assault and offence, the mace was gradually adorned until the late twelfth century when it doubled as a symbol of civil office. Queen Elizabeth I granted her royal mace to Oxford in 1589. From military and civil power derives academic authority. The rest is history and it is not all good.

Dr. Thomas Lemieux, School of Economics with UBC’s Mace at the May 2015 Convocation.

Dr. Thomas Lemieux, School of Economics, with UBC’s Mace at the May 2015 Convocation.

It is time to retire the macebearer, whose importance is inflated every year by the image’s presence on UBC’s graduation pages leading to Convocation. In pragmatic terms, if the mace falls into the hands of the wrong macebearer or manager at this point, someone’s liable to get clocked with it.

Is UBC’s mace still a respectable appendage to Convocation?

Remember, since that fateful November day in 1997, just five months into Martha Piper’s Presidency, when student activists put their bodies and minds on the line at the APEC protest, Tuum Est adorns both the can of mace sprayed in their eyes and the ceremonial mace that the President’s Office is eager to carry across campus every November and May.

Is it not time to retire the mace?

Really #UBC? Taking $7,230 in grocery bag donations? #ubcnews #bced #bcpoli

It has become increasingly difficult to entertain appeals that the University of British Columbia is underfunded by the Ministry. Surely, other postsecondary institutions in BC are chronically underfunded, as the CBC reported on a FPSE report in the fall:

British Columbia’s post-secondary system is in crisis and is failing students by forcing them into careers they may not be suited for, says a group of university and college teachers.

But not UBC and nor are its Faculties, Schools, and bloated Offices underfunded.

One problem is how the Central Managers and Middle Managers (Deans, ADs, Directors) allocate or distribute the money. UBC has a $2b budget and its Properties Trust generated another $2b over the past decade.

Yet managers see it opportunistic to go to grocery stores and take bag donations, effectively from desperate non-profits. *See UBC shameless in taking shopping bag donations.

In February-April, UBC was attached to the cash registers at Whole Foods Market at the Cambie, Kitsilano, Robson, and West Vancouver locations. UBC took $7,230.38 in grocery bag donations from the tills.

UBC took half of the $14,460.76 total while the Environmental Youth Alliance, Harvest Project, Stanley Park Ecology Society, and Westside Food Collaborative took fractions of the balance. For instance, the West Side Food Collaborative received just $1,539.76 and the Stanley Park Ecology Society a mere $889.54.

What exactly is going on at UBC with its finances? Where is the accountability?

#UBC #shameless in taking shopping bag donations #ubcnews #bced #bcpoli

Why is the University of British Columbia now taking bag donations from Whole Foods supermarket, effectively robbing from the poor to give to the rich? Yes, UBC, which boasts a $2b annual budget has been taking bag donations from Whole Foods for the past two months.

During this time, UBC has been shamelessly battling it out with the Westside Food Collaborative for donations (i.e., bring your shopping bags and Whole Foods donates 10 cents per bag saved). It adds up to thousands of dollars for the needy non-profits and now, UBC.

Yes, you heard it right. In addition to battling it out with the University of Toronto and McGill University for the large Development funds, UBC is competing with the likes of co-ops, Kitsilano Neighbourhood House for kids, and the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre.

Apparently, UBC has no shame in insisting that it meets the Whole Foods Community Chest program criteria for bag donations. Whole Foods gives to

non-profit organizations in our local community … those organizations that most closely align with Whole Foods market’s core … hunger relief and organic farming/sustainable food resources.

In this case, and it’s not the first time for UBC, it’s the noted Botanical Garden taking the donations. The Botanical Garden is sitting flush on unceded Musqueam Territory and on the border of the ultra-rich Point Grey area of Vancouver and University Endowment Lands, and in the heart of UBC Properties Trust, which oversaw another $2b in real estate development over the past 10 years.

The Botanical Garden has been lobbying hard for its $20m redevelopment plan. One of the first things the Garden’s Director, Patrick Lewis, succeeded in was

winning the ear of the senior administration, noteably the support of comptroller Ian Burgess and vice-president of finance Pierre Ouillet and through him members of the executive committee.

So there you go, a seat at the table of a $2b operating budget and still ‘want your bag donations’ from Whole Foods. Is this greed or just finesse?

Give back the money UBC! Redirect the donations back to the needy non-profits, many of which have little to no budget to speak of.

Vancouver’s K-12-university crisis #ubc #ubcnews #bced #ubced

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Stephen Petrina & E. Wayne Ross, Vancouver Observer, October 7, 2016– Vancouver, the city of disparities, is faced with polar opposites in its educational system.

The contrast between K-12 schools and the university in Vancouver could not be more stark: The schools sinking in debt with rapidly declining enrolments and empty seats versus the university swimming in cash and bloating quotas to force excessive enrolments beyond capacity.

With central offices just 7km or 12 minutes apart, the two operate as if in different hemispheres or eras: the schools laying off teachers and planning to close buildings versus the university given a quota for preparing about 650 teachers for a glutted market with few to no jobs on the remote horizon in the largest city of the province.

There is a gateway from grade 12 in high school to grade 13 in the university but from a finance perspective there appears an unbreachable wall between village and castle.

Pundits and researchers are nonetheless mistaken in believing that the Vancouver schools’ current $22m shortfall is disconnected from the university’s $36m real estate windfall this past year.

The schools are begging for funds from the Liberals, who, after saying no to K-12, turn around to say yes to grades 13-24 and pour money into the University of British Columbia, no questions asked.

There may be two ministries in government, Education and Advanced Education; there is but one tax-funded bank account.

Read More: Vancouver Observer

#UBC budget retreat records FoI (12 Faculties) #ubcnews #ubc100 #bced #caut_acppu

The Faculty Association of UBC raised some key concerns this week over the University’s budget. Key concerns include UBC’s:

  • overuse of discretionary revenue on capital expenditures: “diversion of operating surpluses to capital”
  • “massive administrative bloat in its complement of management and professional staff”
  • 2:1 staff-to-faculty ratio
  • deprioritizing of academic funding
  • polemic “from senior management that salary increases from the recent arbitration were ‘unanticipated'”
  • refusal to provide a general wage increase above 0-2%

We need to be measured with any sympathy for Faculties or units running up deficits for admin bloat, non-union labour, etc. and turning around to ask for more.

UBC’s unit budgets are notoriously opaque at the Faculty, School, Department, Office, and Centre levels. Faculty, staff, and students are perennially left begging for details or forced to resort to Freedom of Information requests. For instance, on 11-12 January, UBC’s VP Finance hosted a Budget Retreat for the Deans to present their status and plans. The rest of us were not given access.

So here are the UBC Vancouver Budget Retreat January 11/12 2016 records, accessed through a FoI request.

Table of Contents

  1. Retreat Agenda 1
  2. University Budget 5
  3. Law 12
  4. Applied Science 42
  5. Arts 105
  6. Dentistry 135
  7. Education 167
  8. Forestry 180
  9. Land & Food 193
  10. Medicine 208
  11. Pharmaceutical Sciences 228
  12. Sauder 257
  13. Science 274
  14. Graduate & Postdoc Studies 289

Download full UBC Budget Retreat records