Occasionally, even when you have grey hair, things don’t play out the way you expect.
I am on the board of governors of Laurentian University, and generally the most exciting part of the board meeting is trying to find parking.
This is no slight to the board, but rather recognition that the real work is done at the committee level.
Infrequently, something will be deferred or changed, but generally the board trusts its committees to do their work.
The board meeting is a time for questions, information sharing and granting final authority for the board to act.
Last Friday something else happened.
A group of activist students at Laurentian arrived to protest tuition fee increases in Ontario, and at Laurentian, in particular. The board of governor meetings at Laurentian are open to the public.
Arriving late, I missed the opportunity to be denied access to the elevator downstairs (that beachhead had been evacuated to the upper floors), and I had to settle for being admonished upstairs for being a suit, and partaking of the board buffet which the picketers claimed to be paying for.
It occurred to me briefly to invite them in to review the fare, and request an upgrade in exchange for my labour, but I demurred.
I reached for potato salad and carrot cake, and took my place.
As the meeting was called to order, 30 or 40 students filed into the boardroom to take up their observation posts around the board. I thought it was good planning on their part. Nothing like having a P.O.’d student sitting right behind you as you contemplate future spending.
When the moment arrived for Nick Farkouh, the chair of the finance committee, to present the financial committee’s recommendation for the budget, which included the aforementioned tuition increase the cat calls (SHAME! SHAME!) began as anticipated.
What happened next was not. Luke Norton, the student representative to the board, asked to speak. He talked about how difficult it was to afford his schooling. He talked about Laurentian’s determination to pride itself as an important access point for northern students to attend university. He talked about his sister who started university but couldn’t afford it, and is now carrying a gun in Afghanistan. He talked about the $12,000 he owed after two years of university, and that it would be $25,000 before he is finished.
Luke is no slouch. He knows Laurentian needs every penny it can get. It is not a rich institution. He also knows Laurentian is one of the top universities in the province to provide support to students who need it. He made a motion to support the tuition increase at Laurentian in exchange for the university supporting the students’ petition to Queen’s Park to rescind the tuition increase and provide additional funding to universities to make up the difference.
What Luke presented was a win/win proposition. He won the support of the board. In fact, he won even after the students embarked on a strategy to close down the meeting which included endless chanting and some yahoo marching up and down on the boardroom table.
It was odd. The board supported what the students had come to promote. Either by mistake or calculated strategy, they tried to destroy the goodwill Luke had sought to build.One hopes cooler heads will prevail. The student concerns are legitimate. On the other hand, for the university to be useful to the society at large, the university requires the revenue from wherever it comes.
What I saw last week was a young man rise to the occasion brilliantly, a board of directors stand tall by turning the other cheek to keep their focus on what is important: namely the espirit de corps of an institution on the rebound which has an important roll to play in leading Northern Ontario out of the wilderness. We’ll see if we make it through the inevitable upcoming provocations but it was a pretty good start.
Michael Atkins is the president of Laurentian Publishing. This column is reprinted from the March issue of Northern Ontario Business.
