Hi OCADFA members,

OCAD United

In December the Board of Governors (BoG) will be presented the recommendations from the external third party review they commissioned earlier this year.  OCADFA has secured time in the agenda to present an alternative budget.    We want to have a strong community voice at this meeting. If you are able to attend the BoG meeting on Dec 7th (4:30- 7:30 p.m.)  You will need to secure a zoom invitation from the BoG admin assistant, to do so, please email Christina Huang chuang@ocadu.ca to let her know you will be attending and request access to the meeting. All BoG meetings are public and minutes, documents are public unless identified as confidential.  

We held an energetic meeting this Monday to discuss faculty/community intervention at the December meeting of the Board of Governors.   In attendance were students, staff and faculty.  OCAD Student Union let us know that they were NOT consulted on the external third-party review.  An email was sent to them about the review but there was no follow up to ensure OCAD Student Union feedback was incorporated in the review.  

OCADFA will commit resources and advocacy to ensuring that there is a community led, coordinated action to OCAD U’s fiscal crisis that centres the student learning experience, working conditions and the academic integrity of studio-based learning. 

Thanks to Charles Reeve for agreeing to Chair our group meetings and for making the call to action at the BoG level that kick started our group.  We are calling this campaign ‘OCAD United’.  It will consist of activation at the Board of Governors, within Senate and in the broader community.  

In Monday’s meeting many excellent points were made:

  • International students need to be supported 
  • Student retention & learning experience needs to be considered
  • Workload issues & chronic faculty poverty & precarity
  • BoG must be accountable to us, need to hold them responsible for fiscal mismanagement
  • Public funding of education should be advocated for, not abandoned
  • 3rd party review cost 96K and is telling us what we already know, but will likely make recommendations that compromise student experience, academic integrity, studio-based learning, academic freedom and radically transform OCAD in troubling ways

We will be meeting again on Monday Nov. 23 at 11:30 a.m. to continue planning for the BoG intervention. If you would like to be part of this meeting please email me and I will send you an invitation. 

In sol,

Min Sook