Dear sessional colleagues,

This year is shaping up to be even more uncertain and unknown than what you are used to. Many of us have yet to hear whether we will be teaching this fall or winter. With this in mind, OCADFA is organizing a Sessional Town Hall on the topic of employment practices and course offerings at OCAD U .


Don’t take it personally, take it politically!
August 10, 11:00am – 12:45pm on Teams. Please reserve this time, a Teams invitation is forthcoming.

The objective of this meeting is to have a forum for discussing those issues that are most pressing to sessionals, as we brace ourselves for fall. OCADFA President Min Sook Lee as well as other board members will be in attendance. There will be a couple brief presentations including a bargaining update from Mary Eileen Wennekers. We are planning to have more of these town halls in the future and consider this the first effort in creating more community and solidarity amongst our precariously employed faculty. 

In the interest of keeping things moving, we will be creating a speaker’s list in advance. If you already know you’d like to speak please let us know in advance, we’ll start a speakers’ list.  People will also be able to speak ad hoc at the Town-hall. We’d like to have gender parity at the mic and will organize the speakers’ list accordingly. The voices we hear in or town-halls should reflect not just the diversity of our membership but also that of our student population. 


To add your name to the speaker’s list, please visit this link.

On a related note, I urge you to fill out the membership survey. Here is a message from your sessional representative on the OCADFA Negotiation Committee, Mary Eileen Wennekers (FoLASSIS):


“If you haven’t already taken the survey that OCADFA sent out on July 8th, please consider taking it before the extended deadline of July 27th. It’s about a half-hour of time to complete it, but it’s extremely valuable to have this information. Though we are the most numerous labour category in OCADFA, we are often less vocal than our less precarious colleagues. This is a chance to have your voice heard! The survey data is completely anonymous, so you don’t have to worry about any ramifications for telling it like it is. And the more info we have, the better position we are in to continue to push for an end to sessional precarity as we head into mediation with the employer.


The survey will now be open until July 27th. Once all the data is collected, keep an eye out for us to release the results. The more we know about our community, the more power we will have to improve our collective conditions and to look out for each other.”


We always want to hear from you about  best ways to strengthen our voices. Do you have ideas or suggestions for best ways of connecting, keeping in touch and building community? Please do not hesitate to get in touch with me at any time.

In solidarity,

Bogdan Luca

OCADFA Director at large