Thursday, April 3, 2014

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W W W .W E STERNGAZETTE.C A • @UW OGAZETTE

GGGGG A grand achievement Wes Anderson’s latest is a masterpiece of luxury cinema >> pg. 5.

thegazette Suffering from senioritis since 1906

THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 2014

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CANADA’S ONLY DAILY STUDENT NEWSPAPER • FOUNDED 1906

VOLUME 107, ISSUE 95

Confusion reigns over Western scores big Helfand USC eligibility on Sunshine list Amy O’Kruk GAZETTE STAFF Iain Boekhoff NEWS EDITOR The account of how exactly Matt Helfand came to run for University Students’Council president, even with official sources of knowledge of the situation, is conflicting and not entirely clear, even now. After this year’s elections, the USC voted to form an ad-hoc committee to investigate the governance portfolio for the decisions made during elections. One of the reasons for this investigation was the elections committee’s decision to allow Helfand — a graduate student — to run for president of the USC, an undergraduate students’ union. The Gazette reported in early December that Helfand, who is now USC president-elect, was allowed to run because of a “loophole” in bylaw 2. This is the only official decision from the elections committee, but it may not be the full story of Helfand’s march to the presidency. According to the minutes of the December 4, 2013 meeting with Helfand, the elections committee also made a recommendation to Helfand that he take at least one undergraduate course so he would be fully within the spirit of the bylaw. Taking one course for the duration of elections technically would make him a part-time undergraduate student, who would therefore be allowed to run for any USC position. “We recommended to Matt that he register in a part-time undergraduate student course for the winter term of 2014 in order to not only be legal to run on technicalities, but also in the spirit of the bylaw, as well as to look favourably upon not only his nomination, but on his candidacy, because there were a lot of questions about it,” said Pashv Shah, chief returning officer and chair of the elections committee. Helfand did enrol in one undergraduate course, and this was verified by Shah. He was registered on the final day of nominations and the day after he was elected, fulfilling the technical requirements of running for USC office. Helfand has since dropped the course, on the final drop day of second semester. “Unfortunately I had to drop the course on the last day of the academic deadline,” Helfand said. “Upon taking the course, I had every intention of completing it to the

Bill Wang GAZETTE

fullest [...] but with the campaign, teaching two tutorials, all my school work [...] there was a lot to handle and I wasn’t able to perform and I couldn’t afford to have a failure on my transcript.” Without Helfand technically being an undergraduate student, he would not have been allowed to run, according to USC sources that spoke on condition of anonymity. While there is nothing within the bylaws that stipulates a candidate has to be enrolled for a full semester, sources within the elections committee said he would be expected to complete the course, if at the very least as a good faith gesture. “Yes, he was required to take an undergraduate course, and yes, he was expected to finish the course,” said one committee member. Shah said that while the elections committee decided Helfand could run as a graduate student, had he not followed the recommendation to enrol in an undergraduate course, the committee would have had to meet again to decide if he was still eligible to run. “[If he hadn’t enrolled in a course] then that would have been a complete different discussion that we would have had to have in January when his nomination form is submitted,” Shah said. However, Helfand was, and still is, under the impression he would have been allowed to run regardless.

“According to the bylaws as they read, there was not anything precluding graduate students from running,” Helfand said. Helfand was under the impression that there had been an appeal against his candidacy, which failed, after the original decision to allow him to run. Shah, however, denied this, saying the recommendation Helfand enrol as an undergrad came after advisement from the USC administration. “The point is that everything that I did was with the intention of trying to follow the rules, I maintain that I followed the rules,” Helfand said. “If at any point, either registering or not registering I had thought that I was unable to represent the interests of undergraduate students at Western, then I never would have run.” Committee members themselves are unsure of what the decisions they made were. While the member quoted previously said taking a course was a requirement of Helfand’s eligibility, another said this was not the case. “We determined within the guidelines of the rules, he was allowed to run,” the member said. “[To enrol in a course] was a suggestion we made to him after the fact that we ruled that he was able to run, just to reinforce his eligibility, but that was not the criteria that he had to fulfill in order to run.”

The sun may not be shining for Western’s staff and faculty listed on Ontario’s annual public sector salary disclosure report. The report, commonly referred to as the Sunshine List, catalogs all public sector employees who earn a salary above $100,000, as well as specifying their taxable benefits for the previous year. Many Western faculty and staff were included in the pages of the 2014 report. However, the $100,000 threshold was set in 1996 and has not been adjusted for inflation in almost two decades. According to the Globe and Mail, adjusted for inflation the new minimum should be $137,849.91. Although the list is comprised mostly of teaching staff, it is notable that the out of the top 20 earning Western and affiliate employees, 16 are administrators or faculty who also hold administrative positions. These 16 include deans, directors of programs (such as Ivey’s MBA and HBA programs) and various chairs. The average salary of a faculty and/ or staff member in the top 20 is $328,855. Western’s president and vice-chancellor, Amit Chakma tops the list earning a salary of $479,600 in 2013. Chirag Shah, Western’s chair of the Board of Governors, said that Western offers high-paying salaries to administrators and faculty in order to remain globally competitive and attract a senior level of talent. “If we’re going to set ourselves up for success in the future than we want to ensure that we have the best and the brightest available to make our university the best and brightest,” Shah said. “We’re very comparable to those paid in the Canadian university sector […] our challenge is to continue to maintain the quality we have given the faculty compensation and ranges that we have on campus.” Western’s top-20 salary average fares intermediately in comparison to McMaster, Queen’s and the University of Toronto. U of T offers the highest average salary per top20 employee at $417,651. Alison Hearn, president of the University of Western Ontario Faculty Association — who herself is on the list with a salary of $114,740 — said there can be a big disparity in incomes between average professors and top tier employees.

Mike Laine GAZETTE

“There are a lot of professors not on that list and there are a lot of professors who will never get on that list as the result of the way that academic hiring is done and the reliance of the university on precariously employed contract faculty,” Hearn said. It’s also notable that the number of faculty and staff at Western is reported at about 3,900 which does not include part-time employees. This year, 1,183 were listed on the Sunshine List. If the new threshold adjusted for inflation was adopted, the number would be 498. Shah said a lot of the salaries paid out to top-level faculty and staff are actually lower than the income garnered by similar positions in the private sector. Shah said that the list promotes financial accountability. “I think that transparency is really the intent behind the list and I know that from a financial reporting standpoint Western maintains fantastic tone of transparency at the top and were really proud of the faculty and administrative staff that end up on the list,” Shah said. “We’re really proud of the efforts set forth by them.”


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Thursday, April 3, 2014 by Western Gazette - Issuu