Vancouver Island University students took their frustrations about the faculty strike to the university’s board of governors Thursday.
More than 60 students, faculty and community members packed the room at the Coast Bastion Inn where the board held its meeting.
Students missed exactly two weeks of class as of Thursday. Most were there to express their displeasure and angst about the prolonged strike, but some also protested a two-per cent tuition increase on the board’s agenda. Some students wanted to film the meeting, but were told to put their cameras away or be refused entrance.
The board allowed several people to make presentations, and most sided with faculty and voiced concerns about the impact of cuts to education.
“If you raise my tuition, I would really like my professor to be here next year,” Amie Gravell, a geography student, told the board.
She said students just want to see administrators go back to the table and even if the faculty association is asking for things that are impossible for the administration to bargain, students want to know why the two sides aren’t talking about the other items on the table.
Dylan Sharpe, a VIU graduate with a degree in jazz performance, is worried what will happen to the value of his degree if the world perceives VIU as an inferior institution because of the strike.
Julius Muteesa said international students like himself are paying a lot of money to study in Nanaimo and he wants to know if the administration is planning to give students a refund on their tuition if they don’t finish the semester due to the strike.
Frank Moher, an instructor at VIU for the past 25 years, said he has watched his students sit on wait lists because there are not enough course sections offered and now is the time to speak up about it.
“For a number of years now I have watched my students pay more and more to this institution and get less and less,” he said. “This is bad business.”
After the speakers were finished, the board voted in favour of increasing tuition fees by two per cent.
Patrick Barbosa, an elected student representative on the board, voted against the increase, and asked the board to instead pressure the provincial government for more funding.
VIU president Ralph Nilson said the institution faces the challenge of balancing the budget while costs increase and funding stays the same.
