To the Editor,
Re: VIU students ought to show support for professors, Letters, Feb. 24.
Part of what makes Vancouver Island University a great place to do your studies at is the faculty. I know and trust all of my professors to take their students into account when they decide their actions.
Axing departments or firing professors is not what I want for my university, particularly at a university where there is such demand for courses that some students can’t get any courses in their major at times (friends of mine in the creative writing program).
In September, there were so many people waiting for a required biology course it could have filled far more than one section, and a lot of people couldn’t get into that class.
There’s this opinion that unions are the enemy. (Poor corporations, they just can’t compete. That’s why union busting is totally a rational tactic.)
It’s important to realize that the professors at VIU aren’t doing the traditional things that unions do that make corporate sympathizers boil with rage (at the idea of someone having a say in their working conditions?). The professors are reacting.
The university has faced budget cuts every year despite facing increase in student body every year. They’ve cut everything they can. This is not the fault of anyone at VIU, but of the provincial government, and it needs to stop and striking is a good way of sending a message to the government.
So for more funding for our university, it is in students’ best interests to support the faculty in any way they can.
Amie Gravell
Nanaimo