The President of Trent University, Leonard Conolly, announced his resignation early in January, a month after the end of the second faculty strike at Trent University. This followed the resignations in December of the Vice-President (Academic), Robert Campbell, and the Dean, John Syrett. Campbell was the second academic vice-president to resign in 1996.

The Board of Governors also announced the appointment of an external review of the management of the university composed of Harry Arthurs and Joyce Lorimer. Harry Arthurs is professor of law and political science at York and former Dean of Law and President of York. Joyce Lorimer is professor of history at Wilfrid Laurier and Past President of the CAUT. Professor Arthurs chaired a committee of inquiry into the aftermath of the Concordia tragedy.

The overall mandate of the committee is to address two issues:

• how to ensure that Trent's administration meets the standard of best practice within the Canadian university community, and
  
• how to initiate a process which will over the long term promote constructive relations amongst students, staff, faculty, administration, the Board and other bodies concerned with the governance of the University.
  

The review committee will interview the interested parties and will make a public report.

John Fekete, the President of TUFA, welcomed the inquiry on behalf of the Faculty Association.

These decisions came after two difficult months at Trent. The Faculty Association went on strike in November. The administration argued throughout that there was no money available for salary increases. It attempted to revoke the agreement it made in 1991 to end the faculty strike of that year by agreeing to pay the Trent faculty at the Ontario average. It insisted on paying large sums of money to pursue an appeal of a court case involving pension surplus which the faculty had won but which it was nevertheless prepared to negotiate.

A settlement was ultimately reached with the assistance of a mediator and ratified by the faculty on December 6th by a vote of 151-1.

Almost immediately thereafter the President caused a storm by announcing that the University would pay $1,000 bonuses to the nonunion staff for their sterling work during the strike. The administration then denied that it was a reward for work during the strike. The non-unionized staff voted to refuse the bonuses but the administration nevertheless announced the bonuses would be paid. All this provoked a heated debate in the Senate and elsewhere on the campus. The Senate voted to recommend that the bonuses be paid to all staff who worked during the strike.

Earlier in the year the administration had forced wage freezes on the OPSEU staff union at Trent arguing that it had no money. OPSEU members were particularly angry because they had been required to work during the faculty strike. The administration had also refused a demand from the part-time workers for a shared cost medical benefit plan which would have cost the University much less than the bonuses it was now prepared to pay out to non-union staff.

The Peterborough Examiner called it an "episode of ineptitude" that had lost the administration the support of the general public.

Almost lost in the post-strike warfare was the settlement with the Faculty Association. On the principle of parity the Association received a salary increase of 0.5% on 1 June 1997 and salaries for the period July 1997 to June 1999 will be settled by arbitration, if necessary, based on the principle of parity.

TUFA had argued that budget cuts were disproportionately affecting the full-time faculty and hence the quality of education at Trent. TUFA won an agreement that the full-time continuing faculty complement will be maintained. There is an explicit guarantee that faculty numbers may only be reduced if Trent suffers special revenue losses, then only if the loss is sizeable and only in strict proportion to the loss.

There were also a number of significant non-monetary improvements, among them a new policy on personnel files in which freedom of information and open access to employer-held personal data is combined with privacy protections. Also overload teaching can be banked towards a full research leave, increasing the scholarly productivity of the faculty. Academic departments can now consolidate single-course stipends into full-time appointments at a more favourable exchange rate, improving the academic career structure.