Status report

There are contradictory stories in the N.B. media today: one T&T story describes a rise in Liberal support and includes the following, “In recent months, the Grits were hurt by uncertainty surrounding the future of the University of New Brunswick’s Saint John campus. The government has since distanced itself from calls for major changes at the school, which drew mass protest.” The implication here is that Graham and the Liberals dodged a bullet, whew! (though chances are good that the Saint John MLAs are not feeling quite so comfortable). Yet someone must have missed a meeting because the Daily Gleaner takes the Liberals to task for continued inaction: “There was the post-secondary education report which still awaits decisions, barring one comment in the premier’s state of the province address saying the University of New Brunswick Saint John campus would not become a polytechnic.” This sounds more like it: the premier made his heroic announcement that the campus that he himself was threatening would be saved, went on to make comments that reproduced the language of the CPSE lobbyist wishlist report, promised two forthcoming initiatives — the long-awaited report of the working group of presidents and principles, and the new idea of a bi-campus UNB commission — and then … nothing.

Meanwhile, UNB Saint John is losing faculty: people who started looking elsewhere during the height of the crisis are now being made offers, and as the situation on campus is still uncertain, some are taking them. Worse, without the budget inequities between the two campuses being redressed, UNB Saint John is still under a hiring freeze and will continue to be unable to fill vacancies, new or longstanding, in the foreseeable future. Vacancies in the Liberal Arts, that is. An announcement about some applied programme or other would hardly come as a surprise. But without support of existing programmes in the arts and sciences, that would be nothing more than the Miner/L’Écuyer polytechnic through the back door.

Deep relationships with business indeed.

So it’s not over, UNB Saint John is still being damaged, and we are still waiting.