Dear OCADFA members,
I’m pleased to share with you OCAD U’s 2020/21 Alternative Budget. This alternative budget re-invests in OCAD University’s core mission: transformative education through art & design. In recent years OCAD U has adopted an austerity agenda that’s compromised the student learning experience, academic integrity and working conditions for faculty and staff. We have also produced an Operations Budget primer to walk you through some key concerns we have with the current 2020/21 Operations Budget that was passed by the Board of Governors (BoG). OCADFA has secured time on the agenda of the Dec. 7th (4:30 – 7:30 p.m.) BoG meeting to present our Alternative Budget. You can attend this meeting by emailing Christina Huang at chuang@ocadu.ca to request a zoom link to the meeting. I encourage everyone to please come out to show your support.
We have formed a cross-campus coalition comprised of students, staff and faculty under the name OCAD United. We are asking members of the OCAD U community to sign this open letter in support of the Alternative Budget, which we will present at the Dec. 7th BoG meeting. You can read the text of the letter below, and click the link at the bottom of this email to sign.
I’d like to thank the OCADFA Board of Directors, OCADSU, the many faculty, staff and students from OCAD United who have been meeting over the past few weeks to build this campaign to democratize our budget. Thanks to Ali Qadeer for designing the OCAD United logo. And a very big thank you to OCADFA Executive Director Graeme Reniers for researching and producing this alternative budget which was supported by research from OCUFA and CAUT.
In Solidarity,
Min Sook Lee
President, OCADFA