What Can Brock Learn from Carleton

It's 6:30 Wednesday morning. Took the dog for his walk and now, I am having my morning coffee in the study. Just read the Ottawa Citizen's coverage of Carelton President David Atkinson's sudden and, as he evidently described it, "unexpected" resignation on Monday. Here's the link, see for yourself:

Ottawa Citizen

With each news report, a few more details are divulged. There are some interesting paragraphs in the online Citizen story(the emphases are mine):

"Management prevented a strike, the Citizen learned yesterday, by agreeing to a 12.5-per-cent pay increase over three years and dropping demands that would have included the scrapping of automatic sabbaticals.

Mr. Dunn [Carleton's Chairman of the Board] refused to say whether the management-faculty contract negotiations that brought the university to the brink of a strike were a factor in Mr. Atkinson losing his $300,000-a- year job.

Faculty will vote on the deal in a secret ballot later this week.

Mr. Atkinson said he regretted negotiations had "gone to the wall." They were actually concluded a week ago in a downtown hotel room at 4:30 a.m.

"It's unfortunate and does nobody any good," he said, "because the anxiety and despair on campus is significant."

"It was never our intention to take sabbaticals away," said Mr. Atkinson, "but it was our intention to introduce some accountability around sabbaticals. But the settlement is not out of line with other universities in Ontario."

The President (or former President) of a comprehensive university larger than Brock acknowledges that pushing faculty negotiations to the wall does nobody any good "because the anxiety and despair on campus is significant." Can the Brock administration truly believe that deliberately generating anxiety and despair of both students and faculty at our university is a good thing?

As for BUFA demands, how wildly unreasonable can they be when former President Atkinson admits that Carleton's settlement "...is not out of line with other universities in Ontario"? Remember, Carleton has been offered 12.5% over 3 years!