A Petition to Reform AdPReP at the Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta

The Faculty of Arts Staff Solidarity Coalition has the following five (5) recommendations to the AdPReP in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta. Our goal is to reform AdPReP to incorporate a broader stakeholder network and avoid staff layoffs through creative and alternative approaches to the budget shortfall. (1) Make the AdPReP process—including the work of the Alternative Solutions Working Group thus far—more transparent so that all students and faculty may be granted the opportunity to share ideas and lend support to Alternative Solutions Working Group’s proposed alternative solutions to staff cuts. The right of all departments and student organizations across the Faculty of Arts to see and endorse the solutions of an independent Alternative Solutions Working Group should be affirmed promptly after you meet with the members of that working group and they present their alternatives to you. In the meantime, a timeline for this action, allowing for ample dialogue before the decision period, should be announced immediately. (2) Provide an input-feedback mechanism to all departmental administrative staff, faculty, and students, to allow them to explain their department-specific needs and propose alternatives to staff cuts before any decision is made with regard to administrative staff cuts. This could be easily accomplished through an online forum attached to the Faculty of Arts’ website, but there are other options. Some action is necessary to address this, but we welcome your suggestions. (3) Inform departments of their percentage or amount of the budget cut they each have to come up with in order to save a staff position at risk, and give them the opportunity to offer department-specific solutions as department-communities. For example, faculty and students may combine some combination of tax-deductible donations and fundraisers in order to maintain an administrative staff position. (4) With more budget cuts on the horizon, we ask that you transition AdPReP into an inclusive and open faculty-wide dialogue. This dialogue could pivot on brainstorming the most appropriate, ethical, and fair responses to budget cuts and how various stakeholders can work in solidarity with one another in order to improve our collective financial circumstances as a faculty and university. This is an opportunity for you to build political capital within the Faculty of Arts and contribute to solving the larger financial problems facing the university. (5) Finally, we urge you to be proactive with both central administration and the provincial government about the integral importance of Arts to the university’s success and the province’s future. Cuts cannot be juggled indefinitely. With Alberta’s new Premier, we feel optimistic about the possibility of ending the vicious cycle of cuts in the future. We ask that on the question of the 2% cuts proposed to the Arts for next year’s budget you advocate for zero cut alternatives from the outset and realize the original confidence that our colleagues and peers have in you as an advocate and champion of the Arts. We see a significant role for faculty-wide mobilization behind efforts to ensure that Arts once again has a chance to flourish rather than retrench. Together we can build a strong arts community at the University of Alberta. Thank you, The Faculty of Arts Staff Solidarity Coalition