Carleton (fwd)

[Moira Day]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 09:44:34 -0600 (CST)
From: Norman Gee <Norman.Gee at ualberta.ca>
To: moiraday at duke.usask.ca, HEADJ at CENSSW.GOV.AB.CA
Subject: Carleton





                                                 Friday 28 November
1997


                       Carleton U makes $500,000 mistake


                       President delays meeting on program cuts because
of

                       inaccurate data


                       Dave Mullington

                       The Ottawa Citizen


A half-million-dollar error in a $3-million budget has given Carleton
University's School of

Languages, Literatures and Comparative Literary Studies a new lease on
life and the university

another black eye.


Carleton president Richard Van Loon yesterday announced he had
cancelled today's university

senate meeting, which was to have made a decision on drastic cuts
proposed for the school's

program.


"Some of the data on the costs of one of the programs involved were
inaccurate," Mr. Van Loon

admitted.


He said the error was brought to his attention by the faculty, "for
which I am grateful."


It occurred because the figures being used to decide on the staff and
program cuts were based on

figures from last academic year instead of this year.


For example, the figures included the salaries of two faculty members
who left the university at

the end of the last academic year.


He said the proposed cuts to the school's program would only go back to
the senate once

accurate figures were collected. "We'll make damn sure the data is
right this time."


He added that the administration now would review the university's
entire $140-million budget,

not just the $3-million budget of the school of languages.


"I doubt very much that there are errors like that anywhere else, but
we will verify everything

before we go back (to the senate)."


Mark Langer, spokesman for the university's faculty, said: "They
(administration officials)

clearly have egg all over their face."


Mr. Langer, who is also a classics professor, said the administration
had tried to run roughshod

over the faculty in its cost-cutting measures and now it is paying the
price.


"They (Mr. Van Loon and Duncan Watt, vice-president for finance) have a
lot to account for . . .


"It's extraordinary that there were errors of such magnitude in the
costs that were being allocated

to these programs."


<bold>Arnd Bohm</bold>, a professor of German who has been in the
forefront of the faculty's campaign to

save the languages program, compared the "stupid mistake" to a previous
foul-up in the early

1990s when the university sent wrong statistics to Macleans magazine
and ended up near the

bottom of that publication's university-rating selection.


"We (faculty) can't believe it. When people heard about this they were
incredulous," Mr. Bohm

said. "It's not a good thing for Carleton."


He said faculty were aware mistakes were being made but they didn't
realize the extent of it.


"We knew, for example, that the enrolment statistics being cited for
the School were way out of

line. We kept trying to point this out; we said there are problems
here. But they seemed quite

bent on their agenda and weren't listening."


For example, the Dean of Arts and Social Sciences stated there were 50
students in one

program, when there actually were 150, Mr. Bohm said.


Threatened by the proposed cuts were the undergraduate degree programs
in the School's

languages programs, the master's degree in those programs and the PhD
program in

 comparative literary studies.


Mr. Van Loon said the cuts would have meant Carleton would have stopped
admission to those

programs and "some" faculty would have been laid off.


However a number of the language courses would continue to be taught as
part of other

programs.


The proposed cuts attracted a firestorm of opposition from students,
faculty and staff at the

university in recent weeks, and also led to a letter-writing campaign
by a handful of local

embassies expressing their concern at the cuts to the language
programs.


The 71 members of the university's senate, who were to have met today
on the proposed cuts,

were bombarded with e-mail messages, faxes and even photos of staff
whose jobs were

threatened by layoffs.


Mr. Van Loon said the senate's next regular meeting is scheduled for
next Friday, but he didn't

know if it would deal with the proposed cuts because he was uncertain
when the new financial

figures would be available.

Norman Gee, Ph.D, P.Chem

Faculty Service Officer

Laboratory Coordinator of General Chemistry

Department of Chemistry, University of Alberta

Edmonton, Alberta  CANADA  T6G 2G2

403.492.3438 FAX:403.492.8231 Norman.Gee at ualberta.ca

http://www.chem.ualberta.ca/~ngee/Chem10XLabs.html

http://www.acpo.on.ca/acpa/index.htm