At Home: Windsor University Faculty Asssociation holding Strike Vote
On August 14th, the Windsor University Faculty Association(WUFA) will be holding a vote to see if they will proceed with a strike in response to the university’s move to implement a new contract that has been rejected by the staff and faculty.
The CBC reports that the two sides have been at odds for most of the summer, and last week the university President, Alan Wildeman, told the faculty, librarians, sessional lecturers and ancillary academic staff that the offer that was presented on July 15th was going to be implemented regardless of whether the association agrees with it or not.
Dr. Wildeman claims that the Ontario Labour Relations Act, the university is allowed to put the contract into effect, and while the school is willing to continue talks with the WUFA, “the university is not prepared to bargain with itself in the face of WUFA’s unrealistic monetary expectations.”
Around the Globe:Teacher Guns Downs London Private School StudentsThe gun may not be real, but the controversy it stirred up is. Each year, prestigious boarding school Highgate in North London records a video for those graduating, the “leavers.” This year, the video stirred controversy as it shows the students rebelling with cricket bats and scooters when a Nerf-gun wielding teacher clears the school-yard. Unfortunately, some viewers have noted that the scene has “uncomfortable echoes of CCTV footage from the Columbine massacre in 1999” according to the Telegraph.
The school’s headmaster, Adam Pettitt, downplays the controversy, saying that the video is simply a parody of “cinematic gun crime” rather than “the American actuality” and that his students would be “genuinely upset if survivors of the tragic gun massacres in the US were affected by, or took offence at, this tongue-in-cheek scene modelled on an action film shoot-out.”
