Forever Changed

I feel the chill wind of change. Many of my colleagues, my contemporaries feel it too. The climate has shifted on this campus and we are left shivering as it establishes its grip. Looking back since my arrival at Brock in 1980 as a new Ph.D. -- frisch gebacken as the Germans would say -- I had always felt a part of this university community. There were of course senior administrators with whom the Faculty Association had to bargain but one always had the feeling that we were all in this undertaking together, even in the most difficult talks. Agreements had usually been reached by collegial negotiation. Throughout the years of this process, I consistently felt as if I were part of the Brock team, sharing the same focal interest with the 13th floor, namely the intellectual welfare of our students. But today, I feel myself completely and utterly dislocated from that sense of community. More now than ever before, I feel that I am simply an employee instead of a partner in the enterprise of education. The message I am understanding from this administration that is pushing students and faculty to the brink of a strike is that the administration is the university. Make no mistake. You, the students and we, the professsoriate -- WE ARE THE UNIVERSITY. An enormous change has swept over my university. I see the collegiality and partnership of the past replaced by a crass management/labour model that has been entrenched by the negotiations or lack thereof over these past weeks. Brock University will recover in time from this strike. But for me, it will never be the same university it once was. Ever.