Category: Investigative

Exclusive: Guelph-Humber will not be moving as strategic plan is developed

The University of Guelph told The Avro Post on Friday that there are no plans to physically relocate the University of Guelph-Humber “at this time” amid an ongoing process to develop a new strategic plan expected to be completed by the spring.

After a report revealed that last year that Guelph-Humber’s sole building at Humber College’s North Campus was over capacity and there were unverified rumours that the university would be moved, questions arose over its future.

Guelph-Humber was established in 2002 through a partnership between the University of Guelph and Humber College.

Officials pointed to a new webpage dedicated to bringing together all resources to do with the partnership between Guelph and Humber including an operational review undertaken during the fall of 2017.

There has not been a new strategic plan since the governing framework of Guelph-Humber was written in 1999 to establish the university and so a year-long process was launched last May to make a new plan, according to a press release from the presidents of Guelph and Humber.

Guelph-Humber graduates receive a bachelor’s degree from Guelph and a college diploma from Humber. Guelph-Humber students have access to many of the supports provided by Humber and are also members of the IGNITE student union.

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IGNITE discounted Frosh tickets due to underselling

IGNITE earlier this week released a 50 per cent off discount code for Frosh previously reserved for those that opted in and a staffer with the student union told The Avro Post on the condition of anonymity that the move was made because tickets were underselling.

The source was unable to reveal how many tickets had been sold so far, only that the discount was put in place because the mark was not hit. Frosh, a paint party taking place this Saturday evening at Woodbine Racetrack, differs from previous years where musical talent was the feature.

The staffer, based at Lakeshore Campus, told The Post that the student union is also concerned about the upcoming Wild ‘N Out event taking place in October. When the MTV show visited Humber College last year, the event was full and potentially sold out.

The source also expressed concern for IGNITE’s monthly contest where the student union gives away $1,000 in a draw, questioning why the student union would give away thousands of dollars for nine months if they are operating on a potentially smaller budget.

For now, it is unclear why Frosh would be underselling. In recent years, Frosh has been busy and bustling, however, the change from musical talent to a paint party could have come into play for some students. IGNITE has also been using paid advertisements on social media to promote the event.

The Student Choice Initiative has created a split between students who remained opted in to certain IGNITE fees and those that have chosen to opt out. Events like Frosh show that there will be a new standard in a first-come, first-serve basis, giving exclusives to financial supporters.

The first indication of this came with the Frosh party kits. The first 100 students who bought tickets and had remained opted in to the Events and Opportunities Fee were eligible for the kits. It is expected that there will be more of these exclusives over the course of the academic year.

Sources told The Post on Saturday that club executives would have to remain opted in to the Leadership and Development Fee to keep their positions. The move could set a precedent for future leadership opportunities such as IGNITE elections.

Many of the changes will likely become clear with the Special Meeting of the Members on Oct. 16 where a new constitution is expected to be ratified by students and questioned answered in a press conference-style event in the Humber College Student Centre at North Campus.

The Avro Post will reach out for comment from IGNITE.

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Guelph-Humber professor unreachable after giving failing grades

Kaela Johnson, Eli Ridder | Investigative

Diego Williams, a third year Media Business student at the University of Guelph-Humber, has been unable to acquire a breakdown of his grades from a spring course because the professor has been unreachable by both Williams and the school, The Avro Post has learned.

Williams, and at least three other students who came forward to The Avro Post, received failing grades from Professor Thomas Borzecki in his AHSS*3080 Web Design class of Winter 2018, but follow-ups were ignored.

Borzecki is a professor at both Humber College and the University of Guelph-Humber, according to his LinkedIn work history, and has faculty email addresses for both institutions, to which students sent messages.

Williams returned to Guelph-Humber in September determined to sort out what he said was a mistake, as he had excelled in the class, and went to academic advisor Andrea Campea to challenge the 21 per cent final mark.

Williams admitted that he was unaware the deadline for appealing a final mark received in the spring semester was May 18, but still wanted to know how Borzecki came to the conclusion of a failing grade.

Most professors use Courselink, a service that allows students to submit assignments digitally and also is where the results of projects and examinations will be posted, usually with a breakdown and comments.

However, Borzecki took student submissions via his professional website at ThomasBorzecki.ca, thus no one at Guelph-Humber could access a record of submissions or results.

Campea advised Williams to reach out to Borzecki so that the student could get a transcript from his spring professor so that movement could be made in terms of obtaining a breakdown of what occurred.

When Williams could not get a hold of Borzecki, despite repeated attempts through his Gryph Mail and Humber College faculty email, Campea talked to her superior, Registrar Grant Kerr.

According to Williams, Campea told him that Mr. Kerr said there was nothing the University of Guelph-Humber could do to get a hold of Borzecki, leaving Williams disenfranchised with the school.

Diego Williams was not alone in the marking issues and communication struggles with Borzecki, who did not respond to a request for comment from The Avro Post submitted on his professional website.

Another student in Borzecki’s Web Design course in the winter 2018 semester, whose identity The Avro Post has agreed to keep anonymous due to concerns of academic backlash, said that she was ignored by the professor when she attempted to follow up after he only graded half of her final assignment.

The second student, who is in Media Studies, received a final grade of 38, and told the Post: “I only received a mark for the photoshop portion of the assignment but nothing for the coding portion.”

She told the Post about two unverified cases where her friends were in similar circumstances with Borzecki giving them low grades and ignoring follow-up’s, however, one of them got it fixed via her academic advisor.

Another student came forward to The Avro Post after this story was published and said that he also was not marked for the photoshop portion of the final project, which combines coding and graphic design elements.

A fourth anonymous student from Web Design Winter 2018 said she received a 30 per cent final grade, a mark she believes was very low and inconsistent from her usual academic standing.

She followed up with Borzecki on April 15 in an email seen by The Avro Post, but there was no response, despite his replies to two previous emails she had sent asking questions during the semester.

Borzecki was still employed at Humber College in September, according to his LinkedIn profile, and The Avro Post was able to verify that he is listed to teach at least one course next semester, for Winter 2019.

The Avro Post gave the University of Guelph-Humber and Thomas Borzecki a day and a half to respond to emails sent to multiple addresses.

Editor’s Note: The identities of the three separate cases were verified by The Avro Post with student email addresses and other documents. All effort was given to making sure Thomas Borzecki was reached via email as there was no phone number listed on his professional website.

If you have had a similar experience with Thomas Borzecki or any professor, please reach out via our secure Contact page.

Image of the University of Guelph Humber from The Avro Post.

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Progress Report: IGNITE platforms largely not followed through on

Staff | Analysis

This is the first annual Progress Report done by The Avro Post on the status of the IGNITE student government, and how much of their platform has been completed about halfway through their term.

A score is given based on the amount of platform items an IGNITE official has started or completed. For example, if Jane Smith ran on a four-part platform and she had started only two items, then she would get a 50 per cent score.

All IGNITE executives were given over three full days to respond to requests from The Avro Post asking to confirm their original platform points and what moves they have made so far to complete them, however, none of them replied.

The Avro Post found that out of a combined 11 platform items from all the elected IGNITE executives that could be identified, one full and two partial platform points were completed, giving an overall average of 18 per cent success rate from original platforms.

Poll

A poll detailing how much the IGNITE student union matters to students at the University of Guelph-Humber and Humber College campuses has been released by The Avro Post on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/TAPBreaking/status/1062080706376073221

The president

IGNITE President Monica Khosla campaigned on improving accessibility campus-wide, and also addressed concerns over transparency.

During the first Elections Forum during the campaign last spring, Khosla cited physical and social accessibility as areas of improvement for IGNITE.

She referenced work she did representing students at the AODA committee that exists to hold campus to standards found in the provincial disabilities act.

Khosla also talked cited what she called a deficit in awareness for IGNITE events and opportunities.

So how well has she implemented her platform at the halfway point?

Khosla has worked hard on the accessibility angle, bringing about the focus groups that just concluded on Tuesday.

However, the issue of transparency has not seen any drastic improvements so far. Thus, The Avro Post gives Khosla a midterm Progress Report score of:

50%

(1 out of 2)

VP, Guelph-Humber

IGNITE Vice President Maheen Nazim, who represents the University of Guelph-Humber, campaigned on three points: accessibility, flexibility and student input.

Nazim’s most notable platform promise was to create an IGNITE mobile app that would provide accessibility needs, proposing functionality like “updates, real-time parking and upcoming student events” in an interview with The Avro Post.

On flexibility, Nazim wanted more summer placement opportunities and less repetition in courses as part of a flexibility effort, an academic concern that would be exclusively under the purview of the University of Guelph Senate, according to the secretariat.

She also promised to put students first, saying that her “personal focus will always be the students and their needs.”

In an effort to work on transparency, the Justice Studies student said that IGNITE should host an “online forum to educate the students on what is going on behind the scenes”.

Nazim explained the forum would help to fix the issue of IGNITE not communicating with students before they “go searching for answers”, a similar platform item to that of her Lakeshore Campus counterpart Graham Budgeon.

In an IGNITE video released just last week, Nazim added that she is now working on “student leadership” and, while it is possible there has been some movement in that direction, the Progress Report only takes into consideration promises made on campaign platforms.

So how well has she implemented her platform at the halfway point?

First off, Nazim confirmed to The Avro Post just before the fall semester started that she dropped her plans to launch an IGNITE app, after declining to comment in June.

The fourth year instead told The Avro Post that the mobile IGNITE app would “not be an initiative this year”, explaining that “student communications” would be her focus.

An IGNITE student forum has yet to come online, and there has been no announcement from the student union thus far.

It is not known what Nazim has done at this point towards the platform she ran on.

The Avro Post reached out for comment from the fourth year so she could clarify what she does in regards to her platform and also day-to-day, but Nazim did not specify beyond when she said “student communications” was her focus earlier this year.

The app was secretively pushed aside without explanation, the academic concerns are not applicable to the position of the vice president and an online forum is not here and no one from IGNITE will confirm if it’s on the way, so The Avro Post scores Nazim with:

0%

(0 out of 3 platform items)

VP, North Campus

IGNITE Vice President of Humber College North Campus Jeremy Afonso campaigned on re-opening the Linx Lounge as a bar and opening new quiet study spaces to tackle overcrowding at the university.

Mr. Afonso also aimed to bring about “academic advocacy” following the five-week college union strike in the fall of 2017, saying that “a lot of people want certain things to change, and that was not offered last year.”

“I think that people came out to speak their voice, because they know what is right, and they know that what I was campaigning for actually makes a difference.”

So how well has Afonso implemented his platform at the halfway point?

Firstly, Linx Lounge became Linx Café this year, but has not been restored to the full bar that it used to be a few years ago and what was promised in Afonso’s platform. For this, part marks can be attributed.

When it comes to new study areas, The Avro Post reached out to Humber College and Afonso for more details, but both failed to respond for eight days before this article was published.

Thus, The Avro Post finds Afonso’s score to be:

16%

(.5 out of 3 items)

VP, Lakeshore

IGNITE Vice President of Lakeshore Graham Budgeon campaigned on creating an online portal that would connect students with the student union, developing a student network in the process, and create a permanent IGNITE desk on the first floor of the L building.

So how well has Mr. Budgeon implemented his platform at the halfway point?

There is no portal at this time, a platform item Budgeon dubbed “societies” during his campaign, as reported by Humber Et Cetera, and the vice president did not respond to a request over what the status of the initiative is.

As for a permanent desk on the first floor of L Building at Humber College Lakeshore Campus, and IGNITE staff confirmed to The Avro Post that there has been implementation on that item.

Thus, The Avro Post finds Budgeon’s score to be:

10%

(.5 out of 3 items)

Image of IGNITE logo from IGNITE. The Avro Post carried out this Progress Report using files from Humber News, Humber Et Cetera and The Avro Post. Research carried out by multiple staff members.

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Sexual violence at Guelph-Humber covered by college

Eli Ridder | Investigative

The University of Guelph-Humber’s official policy regarding sexual violence is to report the incident through Humber College’s system while the Guelph student guide on the issue sends students to services over 100 k.m. away.

The sexual violence policy document for students published by the University of Guelph instructs survivors to submit a disclosure to the university or through official institutional bodies that have no presence on Guelph-Humber.

The first route, described as a “disclosure” by the Guelph Procedures for Sexual Violence policy, leads to supports for the claimed “survivor”, the term the document uses, but does not lead to action against the accused based on just the disclosure.

The second, more serious route is for a survivor to file a written complaint “through Student Housing, [Department of Human Rights] or Campus Community Police”, all bodies that exist only on the Guelph campus.

However, the students enrolled at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto are directed to follow the Humber College policies should they experience sexual violence, except in the case of a Guelph employee committing the crime.

The policy for Guelph-Humber students to head to Humber are tucked away in the “Scope” section of the Sexual Violence policy of Guelph, where it says incidents are “covered by the policies of Humber College”.

A quick Google search can easily bring up the webpage for Guelph-Humber’s sexual violence policy, which redirects to the Humber site where multiple services are offered, including the Student Intervention Coordinator and the student wellness department.

Humber College also lays out policy for sexual violence, where its stated that “a complaint of sexual assault and sexual violence can be filed under this Policy by any member of the College”, which does not make clear that Guelph-Humber students can follow the Humber route in reporting sexual violence.

It is unclear how an individual would be able to identify whether the employee is paid by the University of Guelph or Humber College, and there is no supporting policy that identifies a solution to the potential issue.

Many consider Humber College’s sexual violence policy to be clear and wholly encompassing, according to comments The Avro Post has received from students at Guelph-Humber.

However, the 50-year-old college is not completely clean from its share of sexual violence, with an anonymous post on a Facebook page called Humber Epic Hookup Fails in 2013 revealing a sexual assault reportedly carried out by a Humber student.

 

Image of the University of Guelph-Humber from The Avro Post. 

Editor’s Note: This story was done to bring light to the process of reporting a sexual violence incident. If in search of what to do, visit this webpage on Humber’s website. 

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Exclusive: Psych students experience grade drop in 3rd year course

Multiple Reporters | The Avro Post

A group of students taking Dr. Masood Zangeneh’s Drugs and Behaviour class, a core course in the third of the Psychology Program, have experienced a significant grade drop they say is attributed to an unreasonable midterm and a lack of professor communication with those in the class.

Marks for the PSYC 3150’s midterm averaged 46.07 per cent for a group of 14 students in the course that disclosed their grades as part of an investigation by The Avro Post in partnership with the Academic Reform Group.

The midterm grades represent a third of the 42-member classlist as of Mar. 14, marks that were the result of the Feb. 6 test worth 25 per cent of the students’ final evaluation.

A student speaking on background said “lectures were all over the place and were not at all helpful when being tested”, explaining that “textbook material was also not tested on and Powerpoints were uploaded almost blank.”

“My friends and I are studious individuals and considering that the majority of us failed the midterm, there must have been something wrong with his grading,” another individual, who is an honors student, told The Avro Post.

“Basically I received a failing grade on the midterm as well as many others in that class, most of which I know are intelligent and hardworking students,” another student wrote in a statement.

“The class average in no way reflects the students and I feel that if so many people did so poorly, it must have something to with the assessment itself.”

All three students who spoke on background dropped out of the course within a week of the midterm grades being released, among several others.

For students to improve their mark, Hannah Derue told The Avro Post that the only option would be to participate in his thesis students’ surveys or assist with an event that involved the promotion of a book he co-authored with the Psychology Program head.

“The only opportunity for students to improve their average after the midterm was either to participate in his thesis students’ surveys in class, or to volunteer for the Global Indigenous Mental Health Symposium, where he will be presenting his new book on Indigenous mental health,” Derue told the Post.

According to the Eventbrite page for the Mar. 21 symposium in downtown Toronto, Zanganeh’s Indigenous Mental Health: A Global Perspective is “corollary” to the event, which appears to mean it is a high priority.

Dr. Zangeneh has also cancelled his Mar. 20 class so he can prepare for the symposium, according to several students.

Derue said she would have to miss critical placement hours to attend in an attempt to boost the lowest mark the honours student has had in university.

Other students said that to go the symposium they would miss their section of another core course, a specific section of Persuasion and Facilitation.

The Avro Post reached out for comment from Zangeneh, but received no response.

Delayed reply

Derue sent an email on Feb. 12 to find out what she did wrong on the midterm but Dr. Zangeneh failed to respond so she sent a follow up email on Feb. 20 that he responded to three days later where he requested Derue meet him the following week.

During the meeting, Derue requested to see her grades and was given her midterm with an answer key for the multiple choice section.

She did not view the long answer sheet because there was another student waiting to see the professor and Derue did not want to take up more of Zangeneh’s time.

For the correct answers Derue did see, she still found the questions unreasonable.

“How could I have known to study the country of origin of coffee in a course that is centred on addiction psychology and drug mechanisms of action? The course material was completely irrelevant on the midterm”, said the third year psychology major.

Neglected students 

Dr. Masood Zangeneh’s midterm was comprised of multiple short answer questions, all worth nine marks each with long answer at the end, a student said. 

The student expressed their concern of Masood reportedly “vaguely teaching the content to the students.”

Aside from the “vague teaching”, student Hannah Derue claimed the context is outdated and irrelevant to the course.  

“I found the research being used to instruct the basics of the course to be questionable both in the validity of research constructs, and simply so old it was no longer relevant.”

Students that claim to normally be studious admitted to struggling with the midterms and questioned Masood’s grading process.

“I received my first failing mark and had to drop the course because it would harm my GPA,” said one student anonymously.

One of the main concerns students expressed is feeling “neglected“ by Zangeneh and being dismissed from any aid.

A student claimed that the professor “doesn’t care about his students at all.”

Ms. Derue also expressed her frustration over the lack of communication between teacher and student.

“When I personally approached Masood, both over email and in person, he was unwilling to give students any opportunity for improvement on that grade.”

As stated previous, the alternative for students to raise their marks is to attend the symposium, however during the event many students are scheduled for the Persuasion and Facilitation class.

“For a significant group of his students, they will need to skip another class (Persuasion and Facilitation) on that day to get the only remaining 5 [per cent] bonus mark in this course for attending that symposium,” said a student. 

More details to follow. 

Journalists: Eli Ridder, Melissa Martinez; Editors: Academic Reform Group, Kaela Johnson

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Female God group not sex traffickers

A group that has been approaching female students on the University of Guelph-Humber campus promoting a religion that identifies the Christian God as female was reported to university security on Friday but do not appear to be dangerous. 

Latest: Two female God evangelicals kicked from campus

Stories: Testimonials from those approached

At least one student publication and local media in the United States have reported on those referencing the so-called “God of mother” phrase with rumours circulating on social media that the group is affiliated with a human sex trafficking ring.

Vice President of IGNITE John Kokkoros told the Post he alerted campus security first thing on Friday morning after hearing about the incidents on Thursday night.

“I personally don’t take these things lightly and wanted to be better safe than sorry by passing the information to security,” Kokkoros said in a statement.

This group that has taken over Guelph-Humber social media groups and been the focus of much discussion online is not related to a sex trafficking ring, but is affiliated with the World Mission Society Church of God, a organized religious institution based in New Jersey.

The rumours about the apperant evangelicals were described by Lexington Police in Kentucky as unsubstantiated on Dec. 30 of last year, but the instituition has been described in the past as a cult, according to an NBC News Lexington affiliate.

It is unknown exactly when the sex trafficking rumours popped up, but they appear to have begun in when the church opened a chapter in the Liousville area, based on the local media reports from the U.S. shortly before the New Year.

Local police did admit that that the group may just be aggressively recruiting, according to NBC News.

An article posted by the Vanderbilt Hustler, a student publication for the university, reported on Jan. 29 that students were engaged by a Caucasian woman and older black man talking about “God the mother”.

The pair reportedly attempted to “exchange contact information or lead them away from campus.”

 

The Post has reached out to university administration officials for comment, with no response at this time.

‘Insistent’ recruiting

Psychology Program third year Hannah Derue told the Post that she encountered the envangelicals “probably in late December” of last year on the bridge between the university and Humber College, were they were “insistent” to share their beliefs.

Derue, 20, said she was stopped a pair of two females that she described as “about my age”, who introduced themselves as Korean who had thick accents that wanted to talk about their beliefs that recognize the Christian God as female.

Derue, thinking they were lost on campus, asked if they were looking for directions.

The pair responded that they wanted to talk about the female form of God, and Derue, uninterested, said she had to leave to the “expressive” disappointment of the religious individuals.

Student ‘confronted’

A female Guelph-Humber student told the Post on condition of anonymity that she was “confronted in the Humber [College] building right outside Starbucks” on Thursday evening by a woman of Chinese ethnicity that appeared to be a student.

The source, who will be identified as Jane Smith, said that she was getting napkins to clean a coffee spill around 5 p.m. when she paused for a moment to listen to a guest lecturer in the lobby before being approached by the woman, who wore glasses.

Smith was asked whether she believed in God and if she wanted to join a bible study, which the student refused and left to attend a midterm examination, describing a “funny vibe” she had felt due to the experience.

When Smith heard of similar experiences being posted about on social media by peers at Guelph-Humber, the source said she realized “how wrong it could have turned if I had given her any information [or] even given her more of my time”.

“I hope spreading the word will make people aware to take precautions and maybe will even scare these horrible people away,” Smith told the Post.

“It’s so close to home and frightening that this could be happening at our school.”

More stories and details to follow. Image of the University of Guelph-Humber from previous files.

Follow The Guelph-Humber Post on Twitter for the latest campus, national and world news non-stop.

 

 

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Deleted past on College Employer Council

A public relations and crisis advisor for the College Employer Council, David Scott, has a past that includes representing at least one major investor scam that he attempted to delete; and now, as a council representative, he now sits on the other side of the table from the Ontario college faculty union.

The Council is a corporation that is designed to deal fairly with stakeholders and stand independent of the government.

Negotiations fell through between the CEC and the Ontario Public Sector Employees Union that represent college faculty on Oct 16.

Scott represented New Life Capital Corporation as a client for several years, and still had them named as a “select client” on his website as of 2013, while he was also working as a consultant for both the College Compensation and Appointments Council and the Ontario government.

New Life was a Toronto-based investment firm that turned out to be a scam perpetrated by its owners, Canadian married couple Laddy Jeffery Pogachar and Paola Lombardi.

Pochachar and Lombardi ran the scam from 2005 to 2008, when the Ontario Securities Commission filed allegations of fraud against the couple and New Life Capital.

The OSC accused the couple and their company of engaging in “acts, practices, or courses of conducts”.

The commission says “they knew or reasonably ought to have known they perpetrated a fraud on investors.”

New Life Capital and connected companies sold units to over 600 mostly Canadian investors and paid out what they claimed was an 8% annual dividend of $197,570.60.

However, “without any profits or earnings, it was not possible for NLI to declare or pay a legitimate dividend,” said the commission in 2008.

“Payments to shareholders have been, instead, an undisclosed return of capital.”

An investigation carried out by OSC from Jan 1 of 2007 to Jan 31 of the following year found that just short of $700,000 of investor money was paid as loans to the couple Pogachar and Lombardi.

The money was used to start covering a credit card debt of some $900,000 with only $300,000 of the total sum spent on “business purposes”.

The allegations from the commission also say that New Life and its companies made “misleading” or false statements about operations and updates, traded securities without registering, and “distributed the securities with a prospectus.”

The couple had transferred over $6.5 million into a “Lexington Consulting Inc” which they had acquired in August 2005.

Scott worked as a spokesman for the corrupt firm, saying in 2008 that the OSC allegations were based on a “misunderstanding”, according to the National Post.

Scott said New Life had been, and would continue to be professional and compliant with authorities.

“New Life has always worked cooperatively with the OSC and we certainly will in the future to clear up this matter at the earliest possible opportunity,” Scott said, according to the Post.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police started an investigation in February of 2010 into the allegations and in 2013 charged them with fraud, theft, possession of property obtained by crime and laundering the proceeds of crime in September 2013.

In 2011, the OSC defined the allegations against the couple and ordered them to pay penalties of $750,000 per person, investigation losses of $258,000 and $21.9 million in “disgorgement of ill-gotten gains.”

Scott had New Life listed as a “select client” on the website for his now-defunct business, David Scott Communications, until November of 2013, right next to the logos of the College Compensation and Appointments Council and the Government of Ontario – two other clients of his firm.

Scott’s LinkedIn does also not show his time at the firm working for New Life Capital.

In 2014, the founders of New Life Capital apparently fled for Central America, possibly the Bahamas, with some $7 million in scam profits, according to the RCMP’s financial crimes unit.

David Scott had no comment on the article after a request by the Post. A request for comment was also sent to OPSEU negotiating chair JP Hornick via email.

Read the latest on the strike here

Part one of a series. Image 1 from The GH Post. With files from the Toronto Star and the National Post. Click here for sources.

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Full pay for U of G profs, no tuition refund

GH staff that are members of the University of Guelph Faculty Association are still recieving full pay during the College union strike that started on Oct. 16, but they cannot cross the picket line. 

A Post journalist called the union representing U of G faculty and learned that while staff cannot pass the picket line as already explained by GH, they are “ready to work.”

The individual on the phone, whose name was not given, told The Post that any hope of college students recieving any sort of refund for their lost tuition expenditures during the strike was highly unlikely.

The UGFA representative said there “was no way tuition would be paid back” when The Post inquired about a Change.org petition calling for refunds. The Post asked if the colleges gave a refund, “would Guelph-Humber do the same?”

Read the latest on the strike here

The University of Guelph-Humber is in a unique position of having several college staff as part of its programs. GH said in a statement that because they could not offer their programs in full to students without Humber College staff, they would shut down the campus in its entirety.

GH said the decision was “made in the best interest and safety of UofGH students.”

Due to a deadline passing for negotiations between the Ontario Public Services Employees Union and the Ontario Employers Council on Sunday, a strike came into effect on Monday.

Emails sent out

The GH Post emailed a series of questions on the status of university faculty at the University of Guelph-Humber.

They were sent via Post Editor-in-Chief Eli Ridder’s student email to the central email for the school on Tuesday morning.

The Post was told to redirect the questions to Elissa Schmidt, who is the Manager of Communications & Public Relations for U of GH.

These questions were sent:

  • During the strike are faculty affiliated with the University of Guelph being paid as usual?
  • If so, does that mean student tuitions are paying for their employment during the strike?
  • Are the university faculty required to continue as normal beyond classes being cancelled? (Ie. Prepare for classes?)
  • If colleges refund students for days lost in regards to tuition, will the University of Guelph-Humber do the same?
More details to follow. Image 1 of the University of Guelph-Humber plant wall from GuelphHumber.ca. This article will update once The Post receives a response. 
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