'You Are UC' Petition Against College of Arts Cuts

'You Are UC' Petition Against College of Arts Cuts at University of Canterbury

You Are UC, the student campaign against cuts to the College of Arts at the University of Canterbury, will be holding two major events this week. The first of these is You Are UC Carnival BBQ to garner more petition support, where the big heads will be returning to show students exactly how management figures out which excellent programmes to cut. The event will be held between 2.30 and 3.30, Tuesday May 15 on the quad in front of James Hight Library and will be highly interactive. The second event will be the You Are UC Petition Crawl, this will see students and their supporters hand deliver the petition to Dr Carr personally. A procession will leave from outside Fine Arts Building at 11.50pm on Friday May 18 and arrive at Dr Carr's office, Okeover house at 12pm, students are prepared to stay all day to see that Dr Carr personally receives the document.

Morgan Hodgson, a spokesperson for the group, said that You Are UC want management to face up to the damage they are doing, both to the students and the University's reputation.

"Students in all three affected programmes want answers. Why is there no document for students? Why did the university seek to covertly sell a department?

"We want the University to admit they've made a mistake here. They need to front up and produce a new document if they want to make cuts. Any new document needs to be transparent. Any new process needs to be done with the confidence of the academic staff and should be available in a format students can access.

"We don't want a S.T.E.M university (science, technology, engineering, maths). We want educational opportunities available for all. If the government only wants to fund S.T.E.M we should be fighting this, not reinforcing its viability.

"By ignoring our attempt to show support for a true process management will be showing what we have suspected for a while, that this is not a democratic university and that favourites have been chosen, most definitely not in the arts."

You Are UC Petition:

We, the undersigned, demand an immediate halt to the College of Arts Change Proposal. The consultation has been meaningless: the business case contains flaws that need to be challenged, and students have not been given the time or information needed to take part. 

This sets a dangerous precedent for the university, whereby management can cut any course they deem unworthy, without taking seriously students’ right to be involved in the process.  

Accordingly, we call on management to abandon this flawed process and initiate an academic review in line with the guidelines in their Blue Book that includes a valid business case, timely consultation with students and advance provision of consultation documents.

ENDS

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