A New Year - 2008 -- and We're Back!

So was hätt einmal fast die Welt regiert!
Die Völker wurden seiner Herr, jedoch
Daß keiner uns zu früh da triumphiert --
Der Schoß ist fruchtbar noch, aus dem das kroch!

Bert Brecht, Arturo Ui

"Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again ..."


A new year was ushered in last night, an event which gives us pause to reflect on the year past and to look ahead with optimism and hope into the promise of 2008.

Not so in Fredericton, where our colleagues of St. Thomas University have been locked out since December 27! On this New Year's Day, when the rest of the country celebrates with municipal levées or merely nurses a slightly throbbing head, St. Thomas colleagues are opening their LOCK OUT HEADQUARTERS.

Make no mistake -- the Faculty Association of St. Thomas (FAUST) has not yet even called for a strike vote from its membership! They were bargaining in good faith against this administration when they were served with a notice of lockout on Boxing Day!

This is a first in Canadian university history, faculty locked out before they have even considered a strike. It is a sad and sorry precedent set by STU's President and Board of Governors. Imagine the message it is sending to its students -- "We have no interest in your term nor in your educational welfare. We intend to crush this union and train this faculty once and for all to obey their administration, and unfortunately you students merely got in the way."

A New Year ... and a new bully on the block.

St. Thomas students return to campus on January 9, but they return to classrooms that are empty because the President of St. Thomas and its Board of Governors have taken the utterly irresponsible action of locking out its professors. Make no mistake -- the Board of Governors has taken the tuition of these students and is now denying them what they have paid for in good faith.

Shame, President Higgins!
Shame, Governors!