Q&A with AMS executive candidates

There is a lot of confusion about the way new departments are formed, especially the new departments that we’re looking to establish: Aboriginal Studies, African Studies and Middle Eastern Studies. First of all, it must be noted that none of these departments would need to start from scratch as there are many courses already in existence that can be grouped together to form them. For example, for a department like Middle Eastern Studies there already exists Politics of the Middle East, Introduction to Islam, Islam in the Modern World, Arab-Israeli Conflict and Regional Security, Modern Middle East, and Politics of Israel (to name a few) but they’re all in different departments. If grouped together, funding would only be required for the administrative aspects, and for several new courses, as opposed to funding for all new professors and all new courses. Furthermore, the way the University’s academic budget works is that there is a percentage allocated to new programming every year. As such, money would not be coming from other departments’ cuts. As well, in order to get a department approved by Senate it has to go through an extremely bureaucratic 5-step process in which the budget is reviewed at each step. In other words, while proposing how these departments are going to be funded, the Senate will not accept “by making cuts in other departments” as an answer. We are not guaranteeing that these programs will be established for next year, although we hope that we can establish at least one. Patrick Deane (VP Academic) is very interested in these initiatives, and so long as there is pressure from the students, he says, the University will be committed to finding the funding for it.