Feature
Free walls for street art 14
Arts & Culture
Opinion
Gravity soars 20
Best midterm time wasters 12 October 9th, 2013
Issue No 9
Volume 104
THE THE OF F ICIAL STUDENT NEWSPAPER AT T H E UN I V ERS I T Y O F A L B ERTA
e
Government Audit
Abandoned
Michelle Mark
news editor @Michelleamark
A
dvanced Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk has quietly dropped his plans to audit the University of Alberta’s finances, the Gateway has learned. Doug Goss, chair of the Board of Governors, told members of the U of A Senate in an in camera meeting Sept. 26 that the government’s financial review project will no longer go forward, said one member who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The people who were supposed to come in — the consultants — didn’t actually show up,” the member said. The government’s reasons for cancelling the audit are unknown. But those present at the Senate meeting believe the project may not have been feasible due to the limited timeframe for the review given the vastness of the U of A’s financial information, which would have comprised tens of thousands of documents. “It was very interesting to actually know that that won’t be happening,” the member said, “Just because it seems that the government is probably realizing that a lot of the things they
want to do, it’s just not possible to do.” Goss confirmed to the Gateway that the financial review won’t take place, but refused to say why. “You would have to talk to the government,” he said. The Gateway asked Lukaszuk for comments on the status of the financial review, but a scheduled interview was later cancelled by his office. “There is nothing to report yet, so we will need to do the interview at a later time,” Lukaszuk’s office said in an e-mail. Goss first publicly announced the financial review through the university’s Colloquy blog on Aug. 20. Advanced Education hired independent consultants from Meyers Norris Penny to review the university’s financial plans and recording practices, and were to help create a plan to narrow the gap between the institution’s projected spending and revenues. The Redford government abruptly cut the university’s operating grant by 7.2 per cent in March. The administration responded by submitting a plan to the ministry in July that would balance the budget by the end of the 2015–16 fiscal
year. The university planned to carry deficits and cut spending over a three-year period. Lukaszuk, however, rejected the three-year plan, leaving the U of A scrambling to cut $84 million in expenditures in two years. The minister has said he introduced the financial review to help identify gaps in the university’s fiscal planning, adding that he was unhappy with the university’s projected deficits and overall budget planning. “In their financial plan, the University of Alberta identified that they’re planning on carrying out deficits, which I found to be rather significant from a dollar value perspective,” Lukaszuk told The Gateway after Goss’ Aug. 20 announcement.
PLEASE SEE audit PAGE 7
Mental Health on Campus
According to a NCHA* 2011 survey of U of A students: *National College Health Assessment
reported feeling overwhelmed by all they had to do
34.4%
felt so depressed it was difficult to function
felt overwhelming anger (about 426 students)
87.5%
52.1% 40.7% 1.2%
felt overwhelming anxiety
attempted suicide
For more on the U of A’s new mental health initiative, SEE page 3
“Clutching your mitten, I’m obviously smitten, Embracing fall love.”
#3LF page 11