Daily Bulletin

Thursday, November 14, 1996

Cool and clear as cider

The book Images of Waterloo County is being launched by its publisher, Quarry Press, at a reception tonight in the University Club (8 to 10 p.m.). It's a compilation of photographs by Richard Bain, taken in Waterloo and the surrounding area, and has a foreword by Peter Gzowski. Bain will be on hand to autograph the book; copies are for sale by the UW bookstore.

Co-op placement: it's a start

Of accounting students, 76.2 per cent have jobs; arts applied studies, 66.0 per cent; arts departmental, 62.5 per cent; applied health sciences, 49.7 per cent; engineering, 65.4 per cent; environmental studies, 49.5 per cent; mathematics, 72.7 per cent; science, 44.5 per cent. Matches for students in the teaching option are expected today, Naese says. "Architecture has not started interviews yet, so stats from those two programs are not included."

The numbers include students who received employment from the main interview period just ended; students who are returning to their previous employers; and those who arranged their own jobs. "In total, there remain 1,216 students requiring employment. Even though this number is high, it is actually an improvement over 1995 when around the same time there were 1,237 students still without co-op jobs."

Job postings for the "Continuous Interview" phase began last week, and posting #3 goes up today. Says Naese: "The first two postings were at capacity and it appears that the next three postings will be as well. Although it is difficult to predict with accuracy what the employment rate will be by the end of the term, we are optimistic based on the number of jobs coming in."

Report on the Westhues case

CAUT sent a "committee of inquiry" at the request of UW's faculty association. The request was based on a complaint by Ken Westhues, of UW's sociology department, that he was unfairly disciplined as the result of a conflict with a colleague, Adie Nelson, and several overlapping controversies. He was suspended from involvement in the sociology graduate program, he was reprimanded, his performance review and salary increase were affected, and he was required to write an apology, which university officials then made public and said was not acceptable.

The CAUT report acknowledges that "Westhues' behaviour towards Nelson . . . was improper. . . . A reprimand and warning were probably warranted, and . . . it might be appropriate that there be some impact on Westhues' annual merit increment. . . . We cannot agree with the University Administration that a proper case for further disciplinary action was made out. . . . Just as Westhues was insensitive to the power imbalance between him and Nelson, so too was the university administration insensitive to the power that it held over Westhues."

A large part of the report is devoted to criticisms of UW's grievance and ethics policies: "Provisions that many are accustomed to seeing in their collective agreements . . . are strikingly absent at UW. . . . Policy 33 and Policy 63 are still so severely flawed that they serve as very real impediments to the fair resolution of grievances. . . . All of these deficiencies (and others) have been brought to the attention of the faculty and administration at Waterloo on previous occasions. Now again, as we shall see, a case has arisen that demonstrates how far these policies have failed to provide proper and fair procedures for the redress of a grievance -- with significant damage to the careers and reputations of a number of parties involved, wittingly or unwittingly, in the dispute, and to the reputation of the University of Waterloo itself."

Attached to the report the CAUT Bulletin are responses from several parties:

• UW president James Downey: "The disregard for fairness and natural justice in a body so free with advice to others on these matters is distressing but increasingly unsurprising."
• Ron Lambert, chair of the sociology department during most of the events: "Having thwarted the grievance panel's good faith efforts to hear his grievance, and pampered by CAUT, Westhues pleads victim status."
• Nelson: "Should they fail to see things the way the Bully does, the Bully will proclaim their members to be part of the Conspiracy."
• Westhues: "If this report helps reactivate the dialogic process at UW and elsewhere, it will be worth the work and pain behind it."

And briefly today at Waterloo

The faculty of engineering holds its 21st annual Engineering Awards Dinner tonight at the Four Points Hotel in downtown Kitchener. Guest speaker is Tom Corcoran, a 1969 graduate from UW's electrical engineering program who is now a vice-president of the Canada Life Assurance Company. The event starts with a cash bar at 6, and dinner at 7:00.

Students in the math-and-business program present a talk tonight on "Perspectives on Success and Entrepreneurship in the New Economy, or, Waterloo, the First Seven Years Out". The speaker is Mark Arnason, a graduate (1989) of the BMath business and technology program, an adjunct faculty member at UW and proprietor of a consulting business. Say the organizers: "Mark will be speaking not so much as an instructor at Waterloo, but as a peer who has graduated recently from Waterloo, and who has had a business and technology oriented career in the New Economy. He will touch briefly on some of his career decisions and experiences, and provide some insight on how the time he spent at Waterloo has contributed to his success." The talk starts at 7:30 in Davis Centre room 1351.

Montreal architect Eric Gauthier speaks tonight (8 p.m., "green room" of Environmental Studies II) in the last of the architecture school's Arriscraft Lectures for this term.

CAR

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo credmond@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca -- (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004 Comments to the editor | About the Bulletin | Yesterday's Bulletin Copyright 1996 University of Waterloo