Nobody wins at BU

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/11/2011 (5392 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

So it’s official then.

The provincial government will continue to sit on its hands while students at Brandon University lose more class time.

On Friday, Erin Selby, Manitoba’s advanced education minister, told The Canadian Press that her government is content to stay on the sidelines and leave striking faculty members and the university administration to hash it out themselves.

“This is a difficult time for students and their families,” Selby said. “We understand their frustration. They want to be back in the classroom. We want to see students back in the classroom as well. The best way for this to come to a resolution would be for both sides to continue negotiation. That’s the best resolution that we can see.”

The minister suggested both parties should agree to go to arbitration, but that the NDP government was going to follow the process laid out under the Labour Relations Act. She refused, of course, to say at what point the province would consider intervening to end the strike — if at all.

Brandon is not a large community, yet we have been blessed over the decades from having two solid post-secondary institutions within our midst: Assiniboine Community College and Brandon University. Thousands of students from Manitoba, Canada and beyond come here to seek their education, and a chance for a good and prosperous future. And our community benefits with their presence in so many ways.

Many businesses in town serve students. From coffee shops and theatres to gift and grocery stores, students spend cash in Brandon. They live in the community, too, filling apartments and homes across the city. Many have vehicles, which require gas and maintenance. And a great number of them look to begin their new lives in Brandon and Westman, finding jobs, raising families and contributing to their community in ways we can’t begin to calculate.

If we’ve learned anything from the three-month faculty strike at Ontario’s York University in 2008, it’s that students vote with their feet. In January 2009, The Toronto Star reported that the number of Ontario high school students who chose York as their first choice for their university education dropped nearly 15 per cent from the year before the strike.

In contrast, 10.5 per cent more students chose Ryerson first and 4.3 per cent more picked the University of Toronto. Overall applications to York in 2009, reported the Star, which included the university as a student’s second or third choice, were down 10.8 per cent.

As the Sun reported in September, enrolment to Brandon University was already flat this year, with final enrolment for the fall term at BU sitting at 3,106 students, a mere 20-student difference from this time last year, BU president Deborah Poff told the Sun.

At the same time, enrolment in Winnipeg’s two largest universities soared to record levels this year. The University of Winnipeg shattered the 10,000-student mark for the first time — recording a preliminary enrolment earlier this month of 10,003 — and the University of Manitoba came within 21 students of its record enrolment six years ago, attracting 27,922 students at the start of the fall session.

This is a worrying trend, made more urgent in light of Brandon’s ongoing labour dispute. For fourth-year students at BU, this is the second time they’ve had to endure a strike, a fact that only serves to hurt the university’s reputation. Judging by the comments we’ve had from students and their parents, there is a deep and growing anger at both sides of the labour dispute, enough that at least a handful of students have already begun the process of transferring to other institutions.

As much as we have rightfully chided the Brandon University Faculty Association for its refusal to go to binding arbitration, the university administration and the province share some blame in this affair — the administration for its posturing and the province for its continued inaction. In fact we get the distinct impression that BU students and the city have been left out in the cold on this one, as the province uses the Labour Relations Act as an excuse to avoid stepping into the fray.

Perhaps that’s something our government ministers can answer for when they attend the Association of Manitoba Municipalities annual general meeting in Brandon this week.

On Friday it was reported that BUFA and the administration had grudgingly resumed negotiations. We hope they’re able to finally reach a settlement. But whether this strike ends today or sometime in December — or longer — it will take at least a decade to undo the damage that has been caused by weeks of accusations, stubbornness and a government seemingly driven by ideology, not practicality.

Ultimately, there will be no winners in this.