By: Kaja Antic, Staff Writer
As we come to the end of this mundane, troublesome, and cost-ineffective academic year, it’s time to jog down memory lane and remember everything that happened this year. And yes, I mean everything.
You have heard a lot from our administration this year as we steadfastly fought against paying our staff fair wages and tirelessly drew programs from a hat to see what to cut next. Lots of work was done for the betterment of our salaries!
We remain committed to our core values in the creatively named “What’s Next: The SFU Strategy.” We may have had some commitment issues in the past, but we promise this time is different! Just don’t ask the football team, cleaning staff, dining workers, or TSSU members, for example.
While faculty and staff contribute to this strategy, I will continue to take credit for it all! Without further ado, the most outstanding achievements of my administration — whether I should be proud of it or not:
Upholding Truth and Reconciliation
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- Continue to use the name Simon Fraser to represent the university. Why should I cut my pay to change a silly name? It’s not like it’s John A. Macdonald University. Get over yourselves! Simon was one of the good ones!
- Addressing colonialism by continuing to fund it through our support of Israeli military equipment, something a university that claims “budget issues” every month should definitely invest in.
Engage in Global Challenges
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- Divert our Board of Governors meetings online to avoid facing any consequences for funding an ongoing genocide.
- Avoid difficult conversations on our contributions to the Israeli military industry by refusing to directly mention pro-Palestine protests during convocation ceremonies.
Make a Difference for BC
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- Cutting the Interpretation and Translation and English Language and Culture programs to aid in the estrangementof newcomers to the Lower Mainland.
- Closing the climbing wall to make students pay full prices at other climbing gyms in the province rather than accommodating their needs ourselves. Why on earth would we do that?
- Contributing to the destruction of greenspaces by interrupting an environmental conservation area to build the long-overdue gondola.
- Continuing to contribute to the rising cost of living in the area by increasing tuition and laying off staff. These contributions are crucial for the padding of my retirement fund!
Transform the SFU experience
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- Close half of the athletics building, no one was using the pool anyway!
- Correction: we do have a swim team! Their space is just hidden away, and if we can’t see it, we can cut it! The football team should’ve just gone somewhere else.
- Refuse to elaborate on the “red leaf” branding. No, you are not getting your mascot back. McFogg the Dogg is at a lovely farm in the Okanagan. Leave him alone!
- Scale back our cleaning team to make campus feel more like home. What? It’s not like you clean your bathroom at home every day, so why should we?
- Removing our Woodward’s Cultural Programs so we can spend more money on conferences that are totally for advancing the university and not just for us to pad our LinkedIn connections lists. What more culture do we need anyway? We even have an Italian program, haven’t we done enough for you people?
- Close half of the athletics building, no one was using the pool anyway!
Thank you
You all have sparked joy in my life this academic year unless you are one or more of the following:
TSSU member, cleaning staff, any member of any union, student-athlete, Health and Counselling user, mascot lover, current faculty member, current graduate student, current undergraduate student, raccoon in the convocation mall, alumnus who doesn’t give us money, searching for friends/life on campus, international student, against our questionable military investments, or English (we have to stay with our Scottish roots that we only occasionally acknowledge).
See you all again soon, you’re stuck with me for another term!
Insincerely,
Jojo Jameson
Not the SFU President
