We have been talking about it for decades, but Black kids still face huge barriers in Nova Scotia’s educational system. Wayne Desmond suggests more money for support workers and more funding for bursaries and scholarships could be a place to start addressing the achievement gap.
The board of governors raised hurdles at every step of the process, only to end up with an agreement very close to what the Dalhousie Faculty Association had proposed at the start of the negotiations. Doing so aggravated the already substantial stress staff and students were under.
Nothing comes easy in the collective bargaining between the Dalhousie Faculty Association and the Dalhousie Board of Governors. Now the BoG announced it is willing to sign off on all but one of the Conciliation Board recommendations. That one issue, not a biggie in the grand scheme of things, affects at what point in time instructors qualify for educational leave.
Judy Haiven: “While many in the mainstream media called Lepine a madman (but interesting, never a terrorist, as they might have done today), Canadian feminists saw that something more sinister and more systemic had happened.”
An overwhelming majority of members of the Dalhousie Faculty Association are willing to go on strike if the university’s Board of Governors doesn’t compromise on its current bargaining stance. “We’re still not sure why this is the year they’ve chosen to try to force through these changes, other than that they don’t believe we have the strength to fight back because of Covid fears. To try to take advantage of the pandemic in such a way is just terrible,” says David Westwood, president of the faculty association.
Media release: Students are headed back to school this fall feeling the same as when classes abruptly ended six months ago, stressed and frustrated.
The Association of Nova Scotia University Teachers (ANSUT), which represents over 1,400 full-time faculty, librarians and contract academic staff throughout Nova Scotia, supports Scholar Strike. ANSUT encourages faculty, administration and students to be aware of the movement and to stand in solidarity with actions that support racial justice, and protest anti-Black police violence and anti-Indigenous colonial violence.
The Canada Student Service Grant pays students less than minimum wage and strips them of basic employment protections. Doing this may well be illegal, writes Lisa Cameron, and it’most certainly sends the wrong message about student labour.
Students at NSCAD University, the venerable post-secondary art school in Halifax, are worried that tuition fees will be raised once again this year. How are students going to pay the already very high fees, especially Black, Indigenous and POC students who are disproportionately affected by the coronavirus crisis? the student union asks.
Dr. David Westwood: “Before COVID-19, it was understood that a year or more of planning, development, and refinement was required for a single, high quality online course offering. Now, professors have scarcely three months to change over all of their courses in time for the fall semester. “