CUPE Ontario’s university workers join local campus representatives to highlight underfunding and lack of transparency
It’s a question you hear all the time on campus, especially when you break it down to its three-letter acronym – WTF or Where’s the Funding?
Today, university workers, represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), brought their travelling Where’s the Funding (WTF) Road Show to the University of Windsor’s student centre this morning, highlighting chronic campus underfunding and the lack of transparency required of Ontario’s universities.
“This is a really light-hearted campaign about very serious issues,” said Janice Folk-Dawson, chair of the Ontario University Workers’ Coordinating Committee (OUWCC), which speaks for the more than 25,000 university workers represented by CUPE in Ontario.
“Ontario’s universities have the lowest per capita funding in Canada. That means larger class sizes, overcrowded lab spaces and substandard cleanliness and maintenance on campuses. At the same time, the billions of public dollars Ontario’s universities receive come with few accountability requirements for administrations,” said Folk-Dawson.
“When you see needed repairs and maintenance left undone for months or years, coupled with a stubborn refusal by administrations to account for the funds they receive, it really is enough to make you go, ‘WTF’?” she added.
The WTF campaign also has a website, cupe.on.ca/wtf that has a wealth of resources available to the public to help them identify and highlight examples of underfunding on their own campus, as well as a Tumblr page that encourages people to find their own examples of campus underfunding.
The WTF Road Show will continue this week with stops in Guelph and Hamilton, and future stops expected in the New Year.
For more information, please contact:
Janice Folk-Dawson
OUWCC Chair
519-766-8376
Kevin Wilson
CUPE Communications
416-821-6641