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CAUT Bulletin Archives
1996-2016

September 1998

Poor choice of words

The Bulletin (June) opens with the headline "University Gets Back at Retired Professor." In fact, it was not the university that got back at him. It was the administration via its board of regents, as the account makes clear.

"The faculty has largely sided with" the victimized retiree, the report informs us. No university administration is the university. We should not report it as such nor fail to challenge any claims it might make to that effect. The university is the common enterprise of staff and students, underwritten by the general public. The administration is supposed to help it function; it does not own it.

LEE LORCH
Mathematics & Statistics,York University