THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO FACULTY OF LAW
ULTRA VOLUME 11, ISSUE 1
VIRES
WWW. ULTRAVIRES.CA
Final financial aid assessments draw ire of first-year students
November 25, 2009
Annual SLS Halloween Party a hit
BY t'r·s·,/\11 1\ group of angry first-year students arc challenging the I·acuity of Law on its financial aid pohciCs, claiming that they have been tricked into making a "maJor life choice" based on prodsional financial aid assess mcnts that turned out to be vastly different from the final awards they ended up receiving. The student leading the charge recent!); via email, invited first-years who had had their financial aid appeals reJected to meet to discuss their concerns 0\·er the discrepancies. According to that email, there were cases where S15,000 of bursary money was revoked. The meeting was conn:ncd on 1\.m·ember 17, with a handful of first-years and five SL,.I) representatives in attendance. The student~ expressed frustration at having been "misled"- each of them found that the decrease in bursary amount between their provisional and final assessments wasn't proportionate to any decrease in their unmet need, mean ing a small drop in unmet need resulted in a huge drop in financing. There was also a concern that the stated basis of the "provisionality" of the assessments is misleading. The letter accompanying the provisional assessment stipulates that the assessment may change based on personal factors like summer earnings, loans, and awards, but it docs not indicate that it may change based on the relative need of other students. The "fn,ed pot" nature of the system is not mentioned until the final assessment letter. There is also no mention of the slidtng scale that gi,·es a full bursar) to students with an unmet need CONTINUED at page 5
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INDEX • LEGAL AID BOYCOTT... P.3 • R. V. GRANT..... P.6 • RECRUITMENT SPREAD..... P.8 • HALLOWEEN PICTURES ..... P.12
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. __________ .. • ARAR V. ASHCROFT.....P.1 8
• UV EATS (BURGERSI) ..... P.21
For more pictures from the SLS Halloween Party, see the centre spread .
Interview with the Dean BY TI:\A YA:\G
As part of our first 1ssue of the year, UI "sat down with Dean Mayo Moran to d1scuss some prcsstng issues the law school is facing, where we're heading for the future, and how the dollars and cents all break down. Here's a summary of what she told us. Tuition & financial aid Providing a top-calibre legal education is expensive. In particular, our higher tuition levels arc largely motivated by student-centred initiati\·es: a low student-faculty ratio, a well-staffed career centre, legal clinics, workshops, etc.. These arc labour-intensive, and therefore, cost-intensive. The basic idea that we operate with is that the cost of a professional degree is shared between students (via ru1tion), the government, and other sources. Within that costsharing model, we do set aside a significant amount of tuition revenue for financial aid. We're also looking for for \\.'a)'S to create other income streams to help diversify sources of aid. Our financial aid program is still the
(3L)
most robust in the country and is, un- celled job talks, limited hiring, didn't eslike most law schools, completely need- tablish new salary lines for professors, based. We arc constantly trying to work and focused resources on things which with student issues regarding the fman- students need especially right now Qike cial aid program. Issues like defining moving funding from conferences to 'need', parental deeming, splitting re- research assistantships). sources between front-end and backThis year will still be bumpy, and we end aid, arc hard questions. But when will have to be careful, but overall, I students raise issues, we do take them think we're in good shape. The Universeriously. In the end, a very sigmficant sity is going to be paying out part of number of our students receive fman the endowment this year, and they've cial aid. It's resulted in very socio-eco- also been trying to help fill funding nomically di,·ersc classes at the law holes in other ways. As well, we've school, as well as di,·erse post-graduate been working on diversifying revenue career choices. sources - for example, the establishment of the new executive legal educaT he recession tion program. \Xe hope our efforts The recession has certainly had a big have minimized the tmpact on srudents. impact on the law school. About 12 per cent of our budget from the Uni- Career prospects versity's endowment wasn't received It's Important to note that overall stulast year. In trying to manage the ef- dent employment numbers are still very fects of the recession, we were very good. The CDO has been keeping a keen to make sure we weren't saddling close eye on student hiring, and the the law school with debt. The big costs number of students who have articles is are the human costs, and we've put in prettv well the same as it \\'aS last year. measures to manage those: we canCONTINUED at page 5