Trouble still brewing at FNUC

The First Nations University of Canada (FNUC) is set to commemorate 30 years of operations this fall—three years spent in its present form as a university and 27 as the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College—but only time will tell how much the institution will have to celebrate.
That’s because this fall the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) is set to conduct a review of FNUC, where ongoing problems have thrown its membership in the association into question.
The problems at FNUC first surfaced in February 2005 when Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) Vice-chief Morley Watson, who also chairs the FNUC board of governors, suspended three senior administrators. He then ordered copies of the university’s central hard drive made, which contained faculty and student records and e-mails, and locked out administrative staff.
A string of resignations and firings followed. University president Eber Hampton and vice-president, academic Denise Henning resigned their positions and Saskatoon campus dean Winona Wheeler, Regina campus dean Dawn Tato and executive assistant to the president Marlene Lerat-Stetner were relieved of their positions. Two of the three staff, whose suspensions began the uproar, were also fired.
A statement released by the AUCC on June 15 said a review committee will visit the university to meet with FNUC board members, administrators, faculty, students and alumni. The committee members will consider a number of issues, including university governance, institutional autonomy and academic freedom, and will report its findings to the AUCC board. Any resulting board resolution regarding FNUC’s membership in the AUCC membership for a final decision.
Charles Pratt, acting president of FNUC, said he sees the impending AUCC review as positive, a move that will get the message out that troubled times at FNUC are a thing of the past.
“We welcome the review initiated by AUCC,” Pratt said. “Obviously the AUCC has received conflicting reports about how our university is run and we’re glad that we’re going to be given a chance to clear the air. Given the inaccuracies and innuendoes, I guess, and hearsay, in the media, we look forward to a fair, open and thorough review that will help set the record straight.”
Pratt said the image of FNUC as an institution in turmoil is simply a product of media coverage.
“They don’t want to get over the initial circumstances and events and move on,” he said. “They don’t realize that our university’s top-rung, top notch, and if they come here first-hand, they’d see the facts and they’d see the truth.”
A fact sheet about the university has been posted on the FNUC Web site claiming, among other things, that the school has made strides toward implementing the recommendations coming out of the all-chiefs task force struck in 2005 to look into the problems within FNUC.
“The 16 recommendations with regard to management have been or are in the process of being resolved or instituted, while the majority of the 16 recommendations on governance are already implemented,” the information sheet reads.
One of the task force recommendations deals with limits to academic freedom within the university, but Pratt questioned the validity of those concerns. He said only two incidents relating to academic freedom have arisen at the school, neither of which has been proven. “So without those determinations we feel there’s still a looming question about whether or not we can be criticized for violating academic freedom,” he said.
“We ensure an atmosphere in our university that’s conducive to academic freedom and our staff and students are expected to display intellectual honesty, integrity and accountability. And we have a policy on academic freedom. We have a collective agreement that ensures that our faculty are protected whenever they [speak] their views on topics related to their interests.”
Dorothy Lane doesn’t share Pratt’s positive view of the current situation at the university. Lane chairs the University of Regina Faculty Association (URFA), which represents academic, professional, technical and administrative staff at FNUC.
A total of 32 grievances have been filed with the URFA against FNUC since the university’s troubles first began. Some of those grievances have to do with the actions that occurred in February, including the downloading of the hard drive and the lockout of employees.
“There’s also quite a few terminations, and the university still tends to be not following the collective agreement in terms of how it terminates people,” Lane said. “There are cases, for instance, where a member comes in thinking that they’re having a meeting about their performance and they’re told that they’re to leave the premises immediately and return their keys. And that’s not the way that termination is supposed to happen, or dismissal for cause. So those things have happened, even in just the last few months, and we’re dealing with those as well.”
Lane said the university’s administration doesn’t seem to understand the collective agreement, and doesn’t appear to believe they have a responsibility to understand it. The number of grievances that have been filed against FNUC is unprecedented in the history of the URFA.
“We’ve never filed that many grievances, total, over 10 years, much less in a single year-and-a-half. We’re just in a sense forced to do that because there are violations and they’re not being addressed in an adequate way.”
A loss of membership in the AUCC would have both practical and symbolic consequences for FNUC, Lane said. Students wouldn’t be able to apply for student loans from the federal government and faculty wouldn’t be able to apply for federal grant money but, thanks to the relationship between FNUC and University of Regina, they could get around that problem by applying as students and faculty of the University of Regina. The loss of membership would have no affect on degrees granted as they are granted by the University of Regina.
“But I think we can’t overlook the importance of it on a symbolic level,” Lane said. “That is that this is the first time that AUCC has ever taken this step. And it’s not about the governing body of AUCC, it’s about the universities across the country who all care very much about the future of membership. I think it will be a terrible loss for First Nations University because it had that status.”
As far as morale problems at FNUC, Lane said they have gone underground.
“People aren’t speaking out any more,” she said. “We had a stage where people were writing letters to the editor and they were coming out very strongly on one side or another and now those people are just trying to get their work done ... and in many cases they’re leaving the university all together. And that’s another thing that’s quite destructive, potentially, for the university. You keep seeing more people who are just despairing that anything will change and leaving.”
A case in point is that of Neal McLeod, who up until the end of June was an assistant professor responsible for co-ordinating honors and graduate studies within FNUC’s department of Indigenous Studies. He resigned his position and is now heading up the Aboriginal Studies program at Trent University in Ontario.
On July 10, McLeod issued an open letter to Vice-chief Watson. (see Windspeaker's letter page 5.) McLeod said the reason he left the school was because he didn’t agree with Watson’s vision or leadership. He said morale has withered away due in part “to your draconian and systematic destruction of academic freedom in our institution.”
McLeod said Watson needed to be challenged. “You cannot expect to disrupt so many lives and not be questioned.”