Faculty at the Kamloops and Williams Lake Thompson Rivers University Campuses will be voting if they have confidence in five named senior administrators.
Tom Friedman, TRU Faculty Assocation President (TRUFA), says non-confidence launched yesterday and will close on Tuesday, April 19.
“We’ll be announcing the results soon after that and what we hope to accomplish is that we begin to see administration begins taking concrete steps to acknowledge, address and resolve key issues.”
Friedman says those key issues are around budgeting, academic decision making, and transparency.
He says once the the results are released, they will sitting down with senior leadership of the University to find a way to move forward through not just words, but actions.
The vote was initiated by a motion at a February general faculty meeting, at which approximately 95% of the over 200 faculty members in attendance, directed the TRUFA Executive to hold such a vote.
“After the February motion,” Friedman adds, “I met with the President and the Provost and other senior administrators to try to determine whether their statements committing to a renewed dialogue with faculty was being accompanied by concrete actions and resolutions to chronic problems. In the more than 8 weeks since that motion, according to what I’ve learned from our members, TRU senior administrators have continued to engage in a lack of consultation, failure to follow Collective Agreement or TRU governance policies, less than transparent decision-making, and budget decisions not in the best interest of programs or students.”
TRU Vice President of Advancement of Christopher Seguin who expressed disappointment, however says that over the last two weeks a variety of things of caught Administrators off guard.
“All of the YouTube videos and all of these communications because they’re made in public, prior to us being informed of them. Meaning that Tom and his colleagues are not coming to us with issues so we can address them properly and internally. They’re making them public debates prior to us having an opportunity to answer them.”
Seguin says they found a consultation committee that is made of administration and union executives tasked with collecting all inquiries from the union and putting them together, and responding to them.
He says they want to move past publicity and feel that the consultation committee, who have only met twice, should be given a chance.
The non-confidence voting asks faculty campuses whether they have confidence in five named senior administrators, including Seguin.
Approximately 800 instructors, librarians, counselors, and instructional support faculty in Kamloops and Williams Lake are represented by TRUFA.
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