News

The SU is pleased to announce that UCalgary administration has backed down from privatizing the bookstore…for now.

This is a win for SU and student advocacy efforts but the fight is not over.

The university is delaying their decision until June 2022 with discussion on this resuming in the new year. This new timeframe will not make students find privatization more palatable but it gives the SU and students time to organize further efforts to save the bookstore.

Thanks to bookstore staff who alerted us to the impending privatization decision, the SU was able to successfully take action and hold university administration to account. The university put together a survey as did the SU.

In the SU survey, 89% of students opposed the privatization of the bookstore and 93% supported the SU taking over operations should the university feel it could not. This student feedback appears to be what shifted the university’s thoughts on privatization.

Thank you to all students who wrote to the university and completed surveys. It is thanks to your efforts in providing the SU with strong data and information that we are able to announce this victory today. While our efforts will continue, we prevented the university from making a hasty and ill-advised decision without seeking proper feedback from students.

Towards the beginning of the pandemic the university, thanks to SU advocacy, implemented a Credit Received (CR) option. This CR option recognized the challenges that students were experiencing during the pandemic. It allowed students who passed a course, but may have received a lower grade, to not have that grade affect their GPA while still acting as a prerequisite for more senior level courses.

The SU believes that this should be permanently available to students and have advocated to the university that they implement a permanent CR option. Though the SU had hoped to have this news sooner, we are very pleased to announce the university has committed to a permanent CR option starting in Fall 2021.

This new permanent option will be called Credit Granted (CG).

All faculties across the university will have some type of CG model. Students will largely be able to assign nine credit units as CG over the course of their degree.

For the typical, semester-based courses, this means that students can use the CG option three times over their degree. Students must apply to do this within two weeks of the end of a course and cannot save up their CG designations to the end of their degree.

This is good news for students and is reflective of what’s going on at several other universities across the country. The SU is proud to have pushed the university to adopt this Credit Granted approach.

Each faculty, department, and program is allowed to add additional restrictions about which courses are eligible. In some cases, not all students enrolled in a particular course will be eligible to use the CG option by virtue of them majoring in different programs. It is imperative, and up to students, to check their degree, department, and program restrictions so there are no surprises if students elect to use one of their CG options.

The SU is continuing to advocate to ensure that students can go to a one-stop shop to view any and all restrictions to the Credit Granted program. Students deserve to have all the information they need to make an educated decision about whether to use the CGs afforded to them or not.

CALGARY – The University of Calgary Board of Governors voted today to increase tuition in Engineering and Medicine by more than thirty per cent and fifteen percent, respectively. Increases would take effect in fall of 2022. Student leaders raised concerns about the consultation process the university is required to do by the provincial government.

The Alberta Tuition Framework sets out the requirement to consult with student associations, like the SU, and students in affected programs over a ten-month window from September to June. Eight of these months occur over the academic year. It is disappointing that the university made a choice to rush this process by only doing true consultation in the final eight weeks and only after students had left campus for the summer.

While senior university officials continue to maintain that consultations were adequate, the SU and students disagree. Students were surveyed in March or April but were not provided any context, details, or costing prior to the summer break. This means that students did not know what they were being consulted on.

Students were not given any details as to the cost increase of the proposal or even informed that the university was looking at exceptional increases until early-to-mid May, well after students had left campus for summer break.

The SU maintains that the university could have received student support for these proposals over their shortened timeline had they conducted consultations that provided context and details to students in the surveys and emails sent in March and April.

“The university has ten months every year, from September to the end of June, to consult students and put together a proposal. It is unbelievable that after only revealing the detailed proposal in the final eight weeks of the window that the university feels students have been adequately consulted. This feels a lot like a student not completing assignments through the year and looking to nail it on the final exam in order to pass.” – SU President, Nicole Schmidt

The SU will now advocate to Alberta Advanced Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides to delay the process so that adequate consultation can occur with the detailed proposal when students return to class in the fall.

“While university administration appears to have no problem with the rushed and incomplete nature of the consultations, we are hopeful that the Minister expects a higher standard. The SU calls on the Minister to review the proposal and direct the university to conduct fulsome consultations.” – SU President, Nicole Schmidt

Media inquiries may be directed to:

Mike Brown

External Communications Specialist

University of Calgary Students’ Union

Cell: 403-560-0577

Email: Michael.brown1@ucalgary.ca

In the Spring, the SU learned that the university was exploring privatizing the campus bookstore by contracting out operations to an American company. The SU approached the university with questions and concerns and learned that the university was exploring a number of options on bookstore operations. Because the bookstore is very well utilized by students, the SU began advocacy on the issue and is opposed to privatization of the bookstore. The company the university had approached has a less than stellar reputation when it comes to managing operations of campus bookstores and has raised costs for students in many cases.

The SU put out a survey to undergraduate students asking for their feedback to both get an understanding of the importance of the bookstore for students as well as better understand how students felt about any changes to bookstore operations. Nearly 2,000 students filled out the survey. Thank you for providing us with your thoughtful feedback.

It is clear from the survey that the bookstore is important to students with a majority using the bookstore to purchase a large amount of their course materials as well as school supplies and UCalgary branded merchandise.

Students overwhelmingly oppose any plan to privatize bookstore operations. 89% of students oppose the university making such a move. If the university feels it cannot run the bookstore any longer, 93% of students believe the SU should take over operations. The SU already successfully runs the Bound & Copied used bookstore.

The survey is being sent to university administration and publicly released. The data gathered will be used to inform SU advocacy on this very important topic. The full results can be viewed through the link below.

Bookstore Privatization Survey Report

CALGARY – Student leaders had the opportunity to question UCalgary administration on the exceptional tuition increases being proposed for undergraduate students in Engineering and Medicine. Students asked several questions about the consultations that the university has said they’ve been engaged in since March and raised concerns as to why the Students’ Union was not made aware of any proposal until mid-May.

The university is proposing a 15.7% increase for Medical Doctor students and 32% and 51% for Bachelor of Engineering domestic and international students, respectively.

The university admitted that students surveyed in affected faculties in March and April were not told it was in relation to an exceptional increase. This means that students were asked to fill out a survey with no context and no numbers as to the percentage increases students were facing.

“This is like government putting out a survey on building a new highway without saying where the highway is going or how much it will cost. Students were left in the dark on what the surveys were about. I’m not sure how the university can claim they’ve conducted meaningful consultation on tuition increases without saying by how much or why tuition is increasing.” – SU President, Nicole Schmidt

Students were only informed of the details of the exceptional tuition proposal in May, after classes had finished and students left for summer break. The Students’ Union has contacted student leaders from the affected faculties, and all have said that no details were provided until May.

The university has a ten-month window, from September to the end of June, to consult on and then submit exceptional tuition increases to the province. This means that the university had ample opportunity to plan ahead and bring these increases forward while students were in classes.

“The university appears to have made a deliberate choice in only unveiling the details of these increases after students went on summer break. This kneecapped the ability of the SU to advocate for students and denied students the opportunity to provide feedback on the detailed proposal.” – SU President, Nicole Schmidt

The SU calls for this process be halted until adequate student consultation can be conducted, as per government regulations. The SU is putting together a detailed list of what the bare minimum for meaningful student consultation should look like. Once complete, this list will be shared with students, the university, and the government.

Until the consultation threshold is met, the SU calls on the university to delay the increases until they can conduct real consultation with students on campus starting in September. Failing that, the SU calls on Advanced Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides to delay the proposals until at least the fall and direct the university to properly consult with students.

Media inquiries may be directed to:

Mike Brown

External Communications Specialist

University of Calgary Students’ Union

Cell: 403-560-0577

Email: Michael.brown1@ucalgary.ca

The University of Calgary Students’ Union is heartbroken at the discovery of the bodies of 215 Indigenous children at a former residential school in Kamloops. This loss is devastating and unimaginable. The SU stands with residential school survivors as we collectively grieve this tremendous loss. Canada was and remains party to a legacy of colonialism that can only be healed through the actions of truth and reconciliation. The horrific abuse that Indigenous children suffered after being taken from their families and their language and culture forbidden must not be forgotten as we all move forward in the spirit of reconciliation.

The SU calls upon the University of Calgary and all orders of government to fully implement the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. For our part, the SU Quality money program has funded programs on campus that support Indigenous students and foster positive relationships with Indigenous communities. There is much more work to do and we all must re-double our efforts in the name of reconciliation.

While symbolic, we must also remove from places of reverence those who created and supported the residential school system. That’s why the decision made by the Calgary Board of Education to rename Langevin School is positive, but it is well overdue. The SU thanks the students of the now newly named Riverside School for not giving up in their four year battle to re-name the school. The SU calls on the Calgary Catholic School Division to re-name Bishop Grandin School and to do so immediately. Only then can we move forward together and begin to heal the wounds of the past.

April was a busy month on the advocacy front for the SU. The Alberta 2030 initiative was released, the new executive team began their orientations to be able to hit the ground running, the SU continued to push the provincial government on the issue of a poor job market for students, and the SU continues its advocacy and campaign on the potential privatization of the campus bookstore.

The SU met twice with Advanced Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides to discuss Alberta 2030 and other issue of relevance to students. Alberta 2030 was released at the end of April. Thanks to SU advocacy and advocacy through CAUS, the final product was a watered down version from what was expected early in the UCP term. The final Alberta 2030 initiative remains a net negative for students and the SU is remaining vigilant on how the UCP government implement it. You can read the SU’s news release on Alberta 2030 here.

In mid-April the SU put out a news release on the lack of a student job program from the province. The UCP government cancelled that Summer Temporary Employment Program (STEP) in 2019. STEP provided a wage subsidy to employers to encourage them to hire students for the summer months. The news release garnered a lot of attention over the following two weeks. The government responded by saying the Jobs Now program announced in the budget, along with Mitacs, will help get students employed. Unfortunately, Jobs now isn’t creating any jobs now for students and Mitacs is largely focused on graduate students. The SU will continue to push the government to better support students.

Finally, the SU has put out a survey on the potential privatization of bookstore operations by the university. The SU is very concerned about a potential plan to outsource and privatize operations of the campus bookstore to Follett or to any private company. Universities who have done this have seen textbook costs rise and agreements rarely have any student benefit. The survey closed on May 7 and results will be compiled and released. Stay tuned as we continue to work hard on this issue.

As we move into the summer months, our advocacy efforts will continue and we will be sure to keep all students up to date.

Calgary – University of Calgary students are finished their classes and writing their exams but don’t yet know what the next few months hold for them as they prepare for the summer. Many students work through the summer to save money for tuition, textbooks, and their living expenses. However, this year the pandemic and a lack of support from the provincial government once again means many won’t find work and will go further into debt.

Last summer nearly one-third of UCalgary students surveyed said they couldn’t find work at all, with another twelve per cent saying they had opportunities cancelled at the last minute due to the pandemic. This scenario is very likely to repeat itself this summer unless the UCP government steps up.

“In less than two weeks students will be done exams. Students want to work and we know many employers want to hire, both sides just need a little help. At a time when students are paying more thanks to provincial cuts and resulting skyrocketing tuition, students are also being left out in the cold when it comes to finding a job.” – Frank Finley, SU President

For the last year, the Students’ Union has called on the provincial government to implement a student-focused job program to support both students and employers. These calls have fallen on deaf ears. No provincial support for students was identified in the Alberta budget and federal support for student jobs is very limited. Many employers simply can’t afford to hire summer students or new grads thanks to the pandemic, but that could change with provincial financial support.

The Summer Temporary Employment Program (STEP) was cancelled by the UCP government in 2019. STEP provided a wage subsidy to employers to incentivize the hiring of students or new grads for the summer months. This program supported thousands of students to work, pay their bills, and gain skills and work experience they need for after graduation.

The SU has called for STEP to be re-implemented or a similar program created. The SU has called on both Labour and Immigration Minister Jason Copping and Advanced Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides to bring in a program.

The SU renews its call on the UCP government to take action on the student jobs crisis. Students can’t afford two consecutive summers without work.

Media inquiries may be directed to:

Mike Brown

External Communications Specialist

University of Calgary Students’ Union

Cell: 403-560-0577

Email: Michael.brown1@ucalgary.ca