From:"John W. Barker" To the editor: It was with great disappointment -- but alas not surprise -- that I learned of Trent University President Bonnie Patterson's recent move to
take to the Board of Governors a proposal to close Peter Robinson College and sell the buildings; a proposal resoundingly defeated by the university's senate, the highest academic decision-making body in the university. As vice-chancellor and the chairman of senate in the absence of the chancellor, the president's actions quite clearly should provoke a constitutional crisis in governance at Trent. That the Board of Governors
would condone Patterson's end-run is disappointing, but again not surprising. I am a graduate of Peter Robinson College. But during my time at Trent, I also belonged to every other college, with the exception of the other
downtown college, Catharine Parr Traill College -- including the three on the Symons campus -- Champlain, Lady Eaton and Otonabee. I first came to Trent in 1976 in large part because of a collegiate structure that included a downtown campus with two vibrant colleges in-town, along with the three newer three colleges on what is now Symons
Campus. I fully endorse the letter sent to the Board of Governors by Trent Founding Members Tom Symons, Dick Sadleir, Denis Smith and Marion Fry.
The administration's proposal to the Ontario government's SuperBuild Fund is ill-conceived in that it would gut the collegiate system as it exists at
Trent in return for a quick, albeit much-needed, cash grab. None of the consultation that should have taken place with Trent't core constituency groups -- including the far-flung alumni -- has taken place. The administration's answer is that fund application deadlines were tight. So the blame is neatly shifted to the province. The fundamental problem
today at Trent is not a tight government deadline. Rather, the problem is that bean-counters are running a school that once prided itself on having
academics as administrators -- administrators who looked at their stint as president as a necessary collegial duty before returning to their first
love, teaching. Now we have a cadre of professional administrators -- the bean-counters. As a former chairman of the Trent Student Union (TSU), as Trent's central student government was then known, and a member of senate ex-officio, I often did not see eye-to-eye on many issues with the late Tom Nind, when he was president. But I always admired Tom's desire to eventually return to his first love, teaching mathematics. That love of teaching and desire
to eventually return to the classroom has been true for every Trent president, with the exception of the incumbent, who is a professional administrator. That Bonnie Patterson is better known for her managerial abilities than her scholarship is not in itself meant to be an indictment. She inherited
a mess. Trent's operating and accumulated deficits are serious problems that must be addressed. My concern is that Patterson, who apparently does not share the collegial vision of Trent's founding members, truly
believes the end justifies the means here and is going to kill Trent to save it, and is not going to let democracy and the Senate stand in her way. I know
she believes she is doing what's in Trent's best interests. What someone should tell her is that Trent is a collegial institution with a cherished
history of the president being simply first among equals. Process, not just results, matter at Trent. It is a message that one of Canada's finest liberal arts colleges has been teaching since 1963. Perhaps it's time the new president harkened to it. Let me be clear. I am not against expansion of the Symons campus. I know enough of the history of Trent to understand that even in its early conception it was planned for the Symons campus to be much larger. I
know about 10 and 12 colleges, the "other" pedestrian foot bridge and the commercial "village" planned for south of Otonabee College on the east bank of the river. I'm not against growth on the Symons campus at what was once Nassau Mills. I'm not against the SuperBuild fund either for that matter, if the university made an appropriate application. Trent works because of diversity and respect among its core constituency groups -- students, faculty and staff. The downtown colleges and the Symons campus complement each other in an essential way. You can't
simply replicate the downtown experience out on the Symons campus. The roles Peter Robinson College and Catharine Parr Traill College serve in the context of the larger university community can quite properly be
re-examined and re-defined to the degree necessary. In fairness, some of the functions they perform today were planned as long ago as the 1960s to
be moved out to the Symons campus. Fair enough. But closing PRC or Traill is not the answer -- not even part of the answer -- to Trent's fiscal woes. John Barker
Subject:Copy of Letter to the Editor of the Peterborough Examiner
Amherst, Nova Scotia