OPSEU Local 560

Many have heard the phrase "union solidarity." Some of you may wonder whether it is just rhetoric. I can tell you from personal experience that it is more than rhetoric. A lot more. Since the College fired me on the basis of a false accusation that it waited eight years to make, I have had a personal demonstration of what solidarity means. It means that I don’t have to stand alone when bad managers use their powers capriciously, arbitrarily and maliciously. It means I have had the support to survive these attacks and fight back. It means I have had excellent support from head-office staff, and from the executive and members of Local 560 and Local 561 (and yes, even some in management). Solidarity also means that the resources will be there after this initial battle is won, to deal with the problem of capricious, malicious and inept management at the College generally, so that others are not put through what I have been through.

In all of this, Ted Montgomery, in particular, has been unswerving and energetic in helping me to right this wrong. As has been the case for other grievors whom I have worked with, I feel fortunate to be the recipient of Ted’s thoughtfulness, creative intelligence and unswerving dedication.

In the meantime, I have continued to be involved in the local’s affairs with grievances and other matters. My proceedings against the College have been progressing, and we are nearing the end. The case has gone very well, and I expect to be exonerated. The evidence is all in, and both sides have made their arguments. We eagerly await a decision. Still to come are our arguments for punitive and aggravated damages both for me and for Local 560. 

Briefly, White’s study concludes:

• "86% of those surveyed responded that the changes in class size have negatively affected the average quality of education."
• "71% reported a decline in quality of the curriculum due to the reduced number of weeks per course."
• "more than 78% of faculty noted that their level of stress had increased ."
• "more than 86% of faculty reported a decline in the morale at their college."
• "86% of respondents – across all disciplines – reported an increase in the workload of the average work week."
• "68.4% of those surveyed responded that the overall quality of education has declined in the colleges in the last five years."

Professionally committed college faculty should be wearing black armbands to symbolize the "crisis" documented by Professor White. The management of Seneca College, on the other hand, in order to promote the illusion of "friction-free" labour relations, came up with its own version of "millennial madness." It invited faculty to put on "black ties" (both male and female?) and join management, their minions, and invited guests to romp into the 21st century at the "Seneca College Galaxy 2000 Ball … a spectacular black-tie event full of fun and fascination…" for a mere $200 per person. The rumour that faculty would be required to wear "clown noses" at this event was not true.

Fiddling, while faculty morale and quality education burn, plays a cruel joke on faculty, students, and - yes - on managers who do or should know better. A first step would be to hire more full-time faculty.  A return to the traditional semester system, as soon as possible, would go a long way to establishing institutional harmony. Meanwhile, black-tie events, such as the "Galaxy 2000" ball, are merely, "restructuring" deck chairs on the educational Titanic!

At Seneca, when violations of the Discrimination and Harassment policy are alleged, the burden of proof is placed squarely upon the accused. Student complainants need not demonstrate actual instances of discrimination and harassment; they need only state that the words or actions of a professor made them feel "uncomfortable." The affirmation implies the verdict for, in such situations, no professor could possibly offer rebuttal evidence about what was going on in the mind of a student. Moreover, accusations can be made anonymously, or even by third parties. In all instances, the accused has no clear right to face the accuser. Rules of evidence and procedure (where they can be said to exist at all) are often made up as the various inquisitions go along. Professors have never been given the minimal protections of natural justice. Fundamental fairness and due process are simply not in the lexicon of Seneca’s administration under the best of circumstances, and the current top-down implementation of the odious ideology of  "political correctness" does not provide the best of circumstances.
Although there have been numerous examples of administrative malfeasance in this area, various "gag" orders preclude their open discussion. I am, however, at liberty to address an issue that threatens to become a focus of one of Seneca’s future "Star Chamber" processes. Stan Gershman made a passing reference to it; I would like to add a little more.

The topic is "faithism." Analogous to racism, sexism and other forms of social prejudice, faithism refers to the alleged tendency of some teachers to make students feel distress because of what they perceive to be attacks on their religious convictions. Regarding this matter, the Seneca Discrimination and Harassment policy (as reflected on page 73 of the current Student Handbook) recognizes students’ rights regarding freedom of religion. It first affirms that students have the right to enjoy "freedom of expression" without fear of "reprisal." It then asserts that students have "the right to be free from discrimination … on the basis of … creed." Combined, these rights leave the door wide open for students to claim religious discrimination whenever the curriculum of a course contradicts their religious opinions. At stake here is nothing less than the principle of academic freedom, for faithism can conflict with academic freedom in two important ways.

First, there is the general question of intellectual orientation. Any course which can be perceived as rooted in materialism or influenced by secularism is suspect. Any course that casts a critical eye on religious dogma or which lends credibility to "cultural relativism" is apt to cause discomfort to the "true believer." The methods of the natural and the social sciences, insofar as they embrace a thoughtful empiricism, are likely to require standards of validity for statements of fact that are more demanding than simple affirmations of faith. Accordingly, teachers of almost any course in anthropology, biology, chemistry, physics, sociology or even comparative religion are at risk of offending those for whom open inquiry is tantamount to blasphemy, and thus of opening themselves up to charges of discrimination and harassment.

Second, there are specific questions of religious doctrine. Miraculous tales of divine intervention in human affairs or natural events clearly run afoul of scientific reasoning. Moreover, when narrowly understood and literally applied, some Biblical stories stand in plain opposition to the findings of science. An obvious example is the conflict between that hideous oxymoron "creation science" and the raw datum of evolution. Perhaps no other apparent conflict between religion and science has emerged in this century as the subject of more acrimonious and unnecessary disputation.

Creationism almost inevitably becomes an issue in many Seneca classes. Although I work mainly in the Police Foundations Program at King Campus, I also have the opportunity to teach one or two General Education options each semester. For the past several years, I have regularly taught ANR 110 ("Cultural Anthropology") and NAT 108 ("Understanding Science and Technology"). In both these subjects I deal with various aspects of human evolution. Increasingly, students have invoked the charge of faithism in their attempts to discredit the academic integrity of the classroom. Here’s just one example. It is an excerpt from a letter I received this past July from a student. She had attended only one full class, felt "uncomfortable" with the idea of evolution, convened a small group of like-minded classmates, and presented her concerns to me in written form at the end of the second class (which she had left half way through in order to compose her letter).

She wrote: "As you are aware there are several thousands of people who do not believe in evolution. I know first hand that several people in our class do not believe in evolution. … Sir, my point is that you have the right to believe in whatever you wish, as do we. Just because you are the professor does not give you the right to stand in front of the class and put down anyone else’s religion or faith. … I would also like to say (and I do not wish to sound threatening) that by continuing to in the way you are currently lecturing, you are opening yourself up to the possibility of students’ complaints to senior faculty."

I, of course, commend the student for dealing with me personally and not first approaching management with her complaint (especially since administrators seem ever less likely to follow the appropriate protocol of sending students with academic concerns directly to their teachers to seek a mutually agreeable resolution). In this instance, the matter was amicably resolved; indeed, to date, I have dealt with all such students "diplomatically" and (at least to my knowledge) none has yet complained to "senior faculty." At the same time, I can easily imagine a case in which a particularly contumacious individual would insist on submitting an essay denying the fact of evolution, would receive a failing grade, and would subsequently appeal the grade on the basis of religious discrimination. In fact, when I raised such a possibility to a member of Seneca’s management, I was assured not only that the hypothetical appeal would be taken seriously but that it would stand a good chance of success.
Part of the problem here may be that the distinction between religion and science is becoming blurred. As Stephen J. Gould has eloquently argued in his recent book, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life, religion deals with normative and metaphysical questions involving morality, the meaning of life, the existence of a deity, and so on. On the other hand, science is properly concerned with empirical questions about biological and physical phenomena. From this viewpoint, each has its own domain and its own epistemological premises. Trouble arises mainly when one transgresses into the realm of the other. Science, Gould says, has nothing to say about claims for the supernatural, and faith is best kept apart from disputations about statements concerning the natural world.

This is something that many intelligent and well informed theologians and clerics have held for a long time. Paleontologist-priest Teilhard de Chardin, Protestant bishops John A. T. Robinson and John Shelby Spong, and Christian scholars Domenic Crossen and Barbara Thiering are only a few of those who have shown that religion has nothing to fear from science because they are separate ways of knowing very distinct things. The Vatican agrees. In 1950, Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis legitimized evolution as a proper field of inquiry and, more recently, Pope John Paul II has declared not only that the factuality of evolution is beyond reasonable doubt but that it is in no way inconsistent with sincere Christian faith.

All of this, unfortunately, has little effect upon the "feelings" of some students. So, we must determine whether or not there is a line to be drawn between matters of faith and matters of fact and, if so, where to draw it. If, for example, some students believe with Ptolemy that the earth is at the physical centre of the universe, must astronomy teachers give this belief equal time in their classes? If some others think that dinosaurs and humans inhabited the earth at the same time, do zoologists have to lend credibility to this article of faith? In short, are teachers automatically guilty of "disrespect" for certain religious convictions when they fail to accept those convictions as legitimate alternatives to what science has discovered? It would do my heart good to say that the answer is unequivocally "no," but I cannot. In the current political climate, management seems incapable of providing serious academic leadership, and teachers lack the authority to determine college policy. As a result, we are in danger of losing the essence of what it is to be a post-secondary educational institution.

No college worthy of the name can be sustained when the plainly false is given equality with the plausible and the probable on the basis of a spurious appeal to equity. Not even the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms imposes the burden of equating astrology and astronomy. It does insist that people be accorded freedom of "conscience and religion … of thought, belief, opinion and expression," but it does not require that fundamentalist religious beliefs be given equal standing in educational programs based on logic, reason and evidence rather than faith.

There was a time, I vividly recall, when academic institutions took a measure of well-founded pride in offering intellectual diversity, challenging received opinions, broadening perspectives, and urging students to subject ideas (their own and others’) to rigorous analysis and criticism. Today, such an agenda could be deemed discomfiting, and teachers who pursued it vigorously could be subjected to compulsory "therapy" and possible disciplinary action up to and including dismissal.

 What is the In-Service Teacher Training Program?

Our Collective Agreement includes a salary schedule linked to a classification plan that establishes minimum and maximum salary levels for individual counsellors, librarians, and professors. Maximum salary levels are determined by the "employee’s relevant formal education levels and equivalencies." As a result, the current qualifications of some faculty prevent them from eventually reaching the maximum salary step on the grid. For these individuals, the In-Service Teacher Training Program (ISTTP) provides a convenient means to access the maximum step on the salary grid, thanks to union bargaining for the 1987-89 Collective Agreement.

Can I Reach the Maximum Salary Level with my Current Qualifications?

To determine whether you are you among those who would benefit from enrolling in the In-Service Teacher Training Program, look at your educational qualifications. If you already possess any of the following credentials, you can reach the highest salary step and do not require an ISTTP Certificate.

• a 4-year Canadian University Degree or more,
• a General Pass university degree, plus a Bachelor of Education degree,
• either a General Pass university degree or a 3-year CAAT Diploma or a certified Journeyman holding equivalent qualifications, plus an Ontario Teacher’s certificate granted before 1992 or equivalent as ruled by the Joint Educational Qualifications Subcommittee (JEQS),
• a General Pass university degree, plus a valid Ontario Guidance Specialist’s Certificate granted before 1992 or equivalent as ruled by the JEQS,
• a C.G.A. designation,
• a P. Eng. designation,
• a C.A. designation,
• C.M.A. designation (formerly R.I.A.),
• other educational qualifications that have been evaluated by the JEQS as equivalent to or greater than the Canadian credentials listed above.

How Can I Enroll in the ISTTP?

Since the autumn of 1999, St Clair College has been the sole provider of the ISTTP. To enroll in the program, simply contact St Clair College via e-mail at inservice@stclairc.on.ca or by telephone, toll-free, at 1-888-643-3360. Sue Byrne is the Program Manager of the ISTT Certificate Program at St Clair College.
For more information on the content and cost of the program, check out http://www.stclairc.on.ca/vc/servtraining/.

If you have further questions, please contact  Local 560's Chief Steward, Josef Stavroff, at 491-5050, Ext. 2208  or by e-mail at  josef.stavroff @senecac.on.ca.

*You can find this article and many others on the Local 560 web site: http://webhome.idirect.com/~opseu 560.