Students come “first” at University of Alberta

Whether you’re a new or returning student, let me be among the first to welcome you to the University of Alberta — I hope you’ve got your wallet ready. If you haven’t paid your tuition yet, you’re about to be $6,000 poorer, should you be fortunate enough to be taking a full course load.

While you’ve been enjoying your summer, it’s been a busy time for the university’s administration. They recently released the 2009-2010 financial statements, which detail their expenditures on executive salaries and last year’s purchase of the President’s house, and have been coping with a general lack of any real criticism from the media or the Students’ Union.

In 2009-10, the university gave its administrative staff a raise of approximately 4.5 per cent, which saw President Indira Samarasekera’s base salary jump from $457,000 to $476,000 while the school is operating with a $14.7 million deficit. She also got $457,000 in non-cash benefits in the 2009-10 fiscal year, up $84,000 from 2008-09. Brian Heidecker, the chair of the board of governors, assures us that the numbers are misleading, since the legal costs of negotiating Indira’s new contract count as a benefit. Apparently, the U of A has some very expensive lawyers.

In a March 2010 response to an Edmonton Journal article about the amount of money being sunk into the U of A’s administration, the University’s Provost and Vice President (Academic) Carl Amrhein wrote, “Students are the reason the University of Alberta exists, and [...] everything we spend is aimed at providing the best teaching, learning, and research experience for our students.” The administration’s inflated salaries and benefits — a combined total of nearly $3.5 million for the President and her five Vice-Presidents — are an illustration of a valuable lesson; in our little world of higher education, students are getting financially fucked over by a self-serving administration that pays lip-service to being a teaching institution while obviously viewing students as nothing more than a source of income so they can focus on what they really care about: research funding and reaching the Top 20 By 2020.

Meanwhile, the SU’s been busy doing ... well, something. They haven’t been doing anything to get rid of the CoSSS fee, a new $145 per-term fee that supposedly funds student spaces, sustainability, and security without actually providing students any new services. They have, however, been putting to good use the $41,154 per year membership fee we pay to the federal postsecondary lobbying group, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA). Our own Vice President (External) Aden Murphy has been appointed chair of the organization. Quite reasonably, he’s said he’ll be devoting 20 per cent of his time to managing CASA’s business, meaning he’ll have to spend less time talking to the students who voted him in at the U of A. This means he’ll be able to effectively represent their interests on a national level. It makes perfect sense.

As for the university’s purchase of President Indira Samarasekera’s home for a mere $930,000? Well, SU President Nick Dehod was apparently unaware of the sale until informed by a reporter at the Edmonton Journal, and said he needed more details before he could offer an opinion. It’s good to know our SU President is so well-informed about what U of A execs are up to.

He did go so far as to call the timing of the sale “unfortunate,” and said he hopes the house is “an asset that turns out to have a good return on investment for the university” — a bold response when the students he’s representing are paying a new fee that gives them no direct benefit to reduce the school’s deficit. It certainly seems to have been a good investment for Samarasekera, who likely made money on the deal, according to Vice President (Finance and Administration) Phyllis Clark. It’s okay though, because she’s paying fair market value rent to the University — if only the same could be said for those in the U of A’s residences, who saw their rent jump by approximately 3.75 per cent this past year.

As for the exorbitant salaries paid to the U of A executives, the SU must understand their reasoning, because they’ve been just as silent on that issue as on nearly everything else of importance to students. You can hardly blame them, since they’re so busy forking out our cash to go to conferences and “network.” Or maybe it’s just a case of nobody having told them about it yet. Admittedly, it’s not easy to keep track of the many ways the U of A is screwing over the student body.

But we can all take comfort in the fact that despite classroom budget cuts, our continued funding of research means that the U of A has risen to 101 according to the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Rankings. We might be laying off sessional professors, disconnecting phone lines, and reducing teachers’ printing budgets, but the U of A still puts students first. Obviously, students value research above their own educations.

Everything’s going swimmingly. The U of A continues the trend of making our time at their institution as pricey as possible, while the SU “advocates” on our behalf without taking any real action. We can all continue in our state of general apathy, secure in the knowledge that the status quo remains in place. There’s no reason to worry, unless the U of A starts cutting fees or the SU does something useful — which should happen shortly before the sun explodes, consuming the Earth and the university along with it.

So go ahead and buy some cheap beer with whatever’s left over after you pay your fees. You can pull up a seat and watch idly as the new year likely brings more cuts, layoffs, and executive raises.