16 minute read
News
return to campus 2021 In Conversation with PGSS
Advertisement
The return to campus has been “disappointing”
Abigail Popple Coordinating News Editor
As McGill prepared to return to campus earlier this year, it became increasingly clear that guidelines given by the administration did not particularly favour the wishes of students and faculties. Several weeks into the semester, these concerns continue to develop. This is the second installment of the Daily’s recurring column exploring the relationship between McGill administration and the broader McGill community.
Soon after McGill transitioned to remote instruction in March 2020, graduate students employed by the university began to express concern over their working conditions. On top of their usual duties, teaching assistants (TAs), graders, and invigilators now had to assist professors with the technology required for online learning; last-minute changes to class syllabi also resulted in longer hours and more work for many employees. As reported by the Daily, these factors exacerbated the already-precarious working conditions of graduate students employed at McGill as their extra labour went uncompensated. Concerns over remuneration continued when the university’s dysfunctional HR program, Workday, resulted in overdue payments for many TAs. The Daily spoke with representatives of the PostGraduate Students’ Society (PGSS) and the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) about how working conditions have changed since McGill’s return to in-person schooling.
Accessing Accommodations
In an interview with the Daily, PGSS Secretary-General Kristi Kouchakji wrote that accommodations are often inaccessible to graduate students even outside of a pandemic context. Student employees have difficulty extending their academic accommodations to their role as an employee, per Kouchakji. HR tells students seeking accommodations that they should speak with the Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD), but the OSD, which Kouchakji emphasized is “extremely underfunded and understaffed and doing their best,” sends the students back to HR because they’re asking for accommodations in an employment context. The conflicting messages from HR and the OSD can prolong an accommodation request for so long that a student employee’s contract will end before they see an approval of their request, Kouchakji said. Additionally, academic accommodations often end once the student has finished their coursework – as such, students who have ceased dayto-day coursework in order to research and write a dissertation or prepare for a qualifying exam no longer receive support from the OSD. Moreover, Kouchakji asserted that graduate studies at McGill has “a culture of ableism and exceptionalism” that makes it hard for students to advocate for necessary accommodations.
This history of bureaucratic red- tape interfering with accommodation requests means that McGill has been left woefully unprepared to provide accommodations in the presence of COVID-19. HR is responsible for determining the validity of an accommodation request, according to an August 29 memorandum from Provost Christopher Manfredi; per Kouchakji, “the barrier is often so systemically ingrained that it’s just less effort [for HR] to deny the accommodation request as invalid.” As the university indicates on the COVID-19 FAQs webpage, students who cannot come to campus this semester may need to “adjust their registration, defer, or take a leave of absence.” Graduate students are no exception: “we [the PGSS] have in fact seen cases where immunocompromised students, students with vulnerable people at home, and students unable to join us in-person on time [...] have been told to take a leave of absence or to withdraw from their degrees entirely rather than be given any kind of accommodation,” Kouchakji said. “It’s not humane, it’s not equitable, it’s not inclusive,” she concluded.
Student employees have difficulty extending their academic accommodations to their role as an employee[...] graduate studies at McGill has “a culture of ableism and exceptionalism” that makes it hard for students to advocate for necessary accommodations.
Interactions with Administration
When asked if graduate students have expressed concern over the possibility of losing job or research opportunities on account of advocating for remote learning, Kouchakji said that she hopes the advocacy of PGSS Council will prevent a shortage of research assistant and TA positions. However, she noted that employees are still in a “tough position,” and interpreted Manfredi’s memo as being “extremely clear that there will be very serious repercussions for people who choose to work remotely.” This has led many people to reconsider their career plans, Kouchakji claimed. She went on to say that “ultimately, the whole situation is really disappointing.” The university chose to “send out a fivepage memo literally telling people that we don’t care about any vulnerable people in their homes” instead of approaching the return to campus with compassion.
Kouchakji also said that pressure to be on campus may cause reluctance to honestly fill out COVID-19 self-assessment forms. “Who wants to be dealing with possible Covid [sic] symptoms, and long lines at test centres, and a possible investigation for having done the right thing in a climate where doing that is apparently automatic grounds for suspicion?” she asked. Furthermore, the university’s return-to-campus plans neglect the fact that COVID-19 is caused by an airborne pathogen, according to Kouchakji; additionally, it does not recognize that “we are living in an interconnected, interdependent society that extends well beyond the so-called McGill bubble,” she said. Eve Cable | Illustrations Editor
General COVID-19 related developments October 21 and October 27. While this information was not included in the Daily’s first column, “Faculty Mandated to Teach In-Person,” this omission is not due to an error on the part of the Daily. The announcement came too late for the editorial board to correct the article prior to its printing and distribution on Monday, October 18, as the Daily’s office is inaccessible over the weekend. Nevertheless, we would like to clarify that the university has now offered vaccination clinics on two occasions.
In other news, the university requires proof of vaccination to enter libraries as of Wednesday, October 27. To access the library, students may present either their official Quebec vaccine passport, or the McGill fastpass sticker which grants access to libraries, dining halls, and athletics centers, among other venues. Students must register their vaccine passport with the library in order to receive a fast-pass sticker – consult the university’s webpage “Vaccine Passports at the Library” for registration locations and times.
On October 26, the Faculty of Arts passed a motion granting the Faculty – not the university’s broader administrative body – authority over mode of instruction, according to graduate student Rine Vieth. The Daily will examine the consequences of this motion throughout our coverage of COVID-19 at McGill.
If you have safety concerns or other tips regarding the return to in-person instruction, email us at news@ mcgilldaily.com
5 Negotiations between AMUSE and McGill at a Lock
Floor fellow’s demands for Collective Agreement unheeded
Saylor Catlin News Editor
Since Summer 2020, members of the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE) have been negotiating a new collective agreement with the University. In particular, negotiation between members of AMUSE Unit B, a special unit of the labour union that represents residence floor fellows, and Student Housing and Hospitality Services has been stalled. Points of contention have arisen from the University’s failure to accommodate Unit B member’s requests for harm-reductive and anti-oppressive language, requests to be fairly compensated during move-in this year, and requests to negotiate pay raises.
The collective agreement (CA) is a legally binding agreement that outlines the rights of casual workers (part-time workers at McGill in different sectors) at McGill. Tuviere OnookomeOkome, AMUSE Labour Relations Officer, told the Daily that the job of casual workers can be precarious; people who work part-time are often not given the same benefits that fulltime workers are, and their work is frequently undervalued. “The collective agreement allows for a document which can provide a little bit more power and a little bit more rights for student workers to work underneath,” she says, “especially for floor fellows who are so paramount in the upkeep of one of the most precarious times for students, which is their first year in residence.”
Christian Tonnesen, AMUSE VP Floor Fellow, explained to the Daily that there are two sections of the collective agreement over which negotiations have stalled: the monetary parts, and the nonmonetary parts.
The biggest stall in negotiation of non-monetary parts is the University’s refusal to include antioppression and harm reduction in the CA. While the floor fellow’s Statement of Principles and Values adheres to these principles, Tonnesen claims that over the past years, floor fellows have witnessed McGill gradually eliminate residence programming pertaining to harm reduction or anti-oppression. “I’ve seen this entire process pretty much all the way through,” he says, “[the University] is not willing to include [this programming] in any such way we have proposed, whether that be in the Statement of Principles and Values and that the job must follow through.”
Unit B is also negotiating the guest policy: floor fellows sign an education lease, Tonnesen
explained, and are consequently not allowed to have external guests in residences despite being University employees. “There has been a history of floor fellows feeling that they are being treated as students who have some special privileges instead of employees who are also students,” he says. He maintained that the policy is unreasonable considering that other employees, like Residence Life Managers, are still allowed guests: “If the University would like us to act in such a special role and trust us and respect us as people with enhanced privileges, we should be allowed to have enhanced privileges elsewhere within the job.”
Unit B is debating several monetary issues as well – namely, increasing the meal plan budget in response to rising dining hall prices. According to Tonnesen, the floor fellow allotment for meal plan has stayed the same for the past four to five years: “If the meal plan is meant to be a sort of pay, in the sense that floor fellows use this a compensation, [...] it stands to reason that that would also scale with inflation as our actual pay has.” Their request to increase meal plan allotments was shut down by the University. Tonnesen also explained that there are ongoing negotiations regarding concerns specific to floor fellows in Solin, considering that dining halls are less accessible to them. While Solin floor fellows receive a portion of their meal plan allotments through gift cards to grocery stores, the majority of the allotment is only accessible at campus dining halls via a 15 to 20 minute commute. Tonnesen explains how inconveniencing this can be: “A good majority [of classes] are remote, so on days [Solin floor fellows] want to eat, they are essentially forced to come downtown when they have a fully functioning kitchen back at Solin.” Unit B is thus pushing for half of the meal plan to be allotted through grocery store gift cards.
Within the realm of monetary issues, Unit B is also proposing a raise in the current wage, which, according to Tonnesen, has only increased by 1 per cent over the last four years. Floor fellows are currently paid at $13.50 per hour; they proposed a wage increase within the realm of $18, but requests were shot down by the University. Instead, the University proposed an increase in hourly wage from $13.50 to $13.64, which Tonnesen stated Unit B did not find to be sufficient. He also explained that floor fellows have seen an increase in duties in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which the union has decided surpasses the acceptable workload. This past year, floor fellows were expected to be responsible for more first-years and organize increased programming; the adjustments to their hourly wage do not reflect this, according to Tonnesen.
COVID-19 has also greatly altered the roles of floor fellows. Tonnesen spoke of the increased emotional and mental tax placed on Union B members and increased risk of exposure to COVID-19: “The idea that we could run into students who were breaking COVID-19 rules or in many cases could have undiagnosed COVID-19 or had it and chose not to disclose to the University was quite unsettling from a workplace safety perspective,” he explained.“[Floor fellows] are being exposed to students who are potentially being exposed to COVID-19, and they’re getting paid just slightly above minimum wage,” commented Onookome-Okome.
Additionally, Student Housing and Hospitality Service introduced new drug policies and banned public consumption of alcohol. Tonnesen explained that these new policies positioned floor fellows in the role of police officers or enforcers, something that they were not comfortable taking on: “If we saw any behavior that was not in line with the current standards, we
were supposed to fill out a form that would report the student to higher admin in Student Housing and Hospitality Services [...] our role is not to act as police officers, [...] it is to be support systems.” These new drug policies further undermined harm reduction approaches that floor fellows have advocated for.
As negotiations remain ongoing, Tonnesen stresses the importance of listening to the wishes of floor fellows: “If we could see the type of support that we see for a lot of other causes at McGill, I think there would be some really great changes in residence that would be beneficial for the current set of first year students and any first year students going on.”
Eve Cable | The McGill Daily
News Revisiting McGill’s Equity Plans One year since release of the AP-ABR
Abigail Popple Coordinating News Editor
It has been over a year since Principal Suzanne Fortier announced the implementation of McGill’s Action Plan to Address Anti-Black Racism (AP-ABR), based on the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Plan released in June of 2020. As the AP-ABR is only one year into its five-year trajectory, many objectives have yet to be completed – regardless, the university has maintained several of its commitments thus far. Associate Provost of Equity and Academic Policies Angela Campbell clarified, however, that the plan is only meant to be a starting point for the university: “this is going to be an ongoing effort [...] as long as the [university] goes, there has to be a commitment,” she said during a student press conference.
Among the university’s completed objectives is the appointment of Professor Terri Givens as the Provost’s Academic Lead and Advisor (PALA) on the Action Plan. In her capacity as PALA, Givens will lead McGill’s efforts to hire more Black professors for tenure and tenure-track positions and “advise academic leaders (Deans, Chairs, Directors, and Associate Deans) about the distinct needs and experiences of Black faculty.” In this vein, McGill has designated 15 Black faculty members to be added to McGill’s tenure-track positions, according to documents sent to the Daily by McGill’s Media Relations Office. Givens commented that she would like to surpass McGill’s goal of having Black faculty make up 5 per cent of M-Level employees: “My goal is for McGill to become a beacon for people who are interested in the study of the African diaspora [and] Black studies.” The BSN has advocated for the creation of an Africana studies department in the past, but the University has not announced any intention to create a department specific to African diaspora.
The AP-ABR also included commitments specific to student experience. The university has succeeded in meeting their first goal in this category with the creation of a student census, which is available for all students to complete via Minerva. Additionally, the university has been conducting monthly meetings with students from the McGill African Studies Society and the BSN to get student feedback on the progress of the AP-ABR, and revise accordingly. To meet the mental health needs of Black students, the university has created two positions in the Wellness Hub. One of these positions has already been filled: a Local Wellness Advisor (LWA) with expertise in the psychological impacts of racism was hired in January of this year. Although the Wellness Hub has previously been criticized for difficulty in accessing mental health services, Campbell says that the Black Student Liaison has not raised concerns in regards to the accessibility of this LWA; McGill reports that the LWA has served 120 students thus far.
When asked about how students and staff would be held accountable to the antioppressive mandates of the EDI Plan, Campbell said that the first step in fostering an antioppressive culture is getting people to understand why microaggressions are harmful. “When [microaggressions] occur, the difficulty is often that [...] the community dominant groups don’t often understand why they’re so harmful or painful,” she explained. The university is in the midst of educating professors and administration on the impacts of microaggressions, and the launch of the Office for Mediation and Reporting has created a channel for students to report discriminatory behaviour on campus. Last year, Provost Christopher Manfredi told the Daily that the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures would be a means of reducing anti-Black racism, claiming that most students experience microaggressions from other students. During this year’s press conference, Campbell instead emphasized a top-down approach to combating anti-Black racism which prioritizes educating faculty and administration.
These educational initiatives include the implementation of modules about anti-Black racism. While Campbell said that she does not expect modules to eliminate racism on campus by themselves, she said “it sends a message that it’s important and that we take the matter seriously. [The module] does not by itself achieve [an end to racism].” In discussing the modules, Campbell remarked that It Takes All of Us, McGill’s mandatory online module about sexual assault, has served as an example for other universities seeking to reduce sexual violence on campus. Likewise, Givens said that educational workshops and modules have seen good reception: “I’ve really been kind of overwhelmed with the positive approach that a lot of people are bringing to the workshops.” Campbell hopes that these workshops will encourage professors to adopt more inclusive curricula and pedagogies, another goal presented in the AP-ABR. She also hopes that the University will begin to consider how bias may impact an instructors’ student evaluations – Deans and Department Chairs refer to student evaluations when considering whether an instructor should be given a tenure-track position, so Campbell wants “to make sure that [instructors] aren’t penalized in a way that’s unjust on account of bias on the part of the students who do the work evaluating them.”
The AP-ABR stated that the university would reach a final decision about what to do with the statue of James McGill by the end of the bicentennial year. The Daily asked for clarification as to when the deadline for a decision would be, but the university employees present at the conference were not aware of the specific timeline for this decision. The statue has been removed from campus for the time being due to vandalism, but there is no final decision as of yet. The university has also not created a website to “showcase the presence and success of Black McGillians over time,” as was included in the AP-ABR; instead, the Bicentennial website is pointed to as a space for highlighting the history of Black students and staff at McGill.
Tiana Koundakjian | Illustrations Contributor
McGill has designated 15 Black faculty members to be added to McGill’s tenure-track positions [...] Givens commented that she would like to surpass McGill’s goal of having Black faculty make up 5 percent of M-Level employees.
