Posted on No Comments on November 1st Events

November 1st Events

Hi all! There are two very important events happening tomorrow we’d like to remind you about!

gradstudieswithrsvptoeassu

The first is our Grad Studies workshop, which is taking place from 1-3pm in SS2115. It will be hosted by Professor Janet Poole, who has offered to share information and answer questions about applying to graduate school and the types of EAS programs offered here at UT and at outside schools. Come out to learn about your options for the future! Due to limited space, please RSVP to eassu@yahoo.ca if you plan on attending.

Also, the “alternative town hall” meeting for all organizations involved in opposing the Dean’s (former!) Academic Plan are meeting tomorrow from 12-2pm in OISE room 2214. While we won the battle against the Academic Plan, the greater war against these kind of blanketed cuts to humanities programs still needs to be fought. Under the current university policies, our department is still in danger of being disestablished at any point without democratic consultation or intellectual rationale. This meeting will be a great opportunity for students to voice their opinions so that a document of our collective demands can be drawn up and presented to the administration. Now is the time for real change!

Due to these events, EASSU will not be holding our regular office hours tomorrow from 1-3pm.

We hope to see you at either the town hall meeting or the grad studies workshop tomorrow! Stay tuned for more upcoming events, we have a busy November planned!

– Julianne

Posted on No Comments on Our department is saved!

Our department is saved!

Rumours have been circling for the past two days about the status of the Dean’s plan, and although we don’t yet have an official announcement from the administration, we have had confirmation from Professor Keirstead, the chair of our department, that we should offically announce the good news:

The School of Languages and Literatures is dead!

Here’s a modified version of what Josiah Blackmore, Chair of Spanish and Portuguese, had to say earlier today:

The chairs of the “affected” units had a meeting with the dean and 3 vice-deans yesterday morning. More information will be coming later, but for the time the proposed School of Languages and Literatures is off the board, and departments for the foreseeable future will retain their autonomous status. The discussion with the dean was positive, so we have reason to be optimistic, although much work remains ahead. The dean outlined several tasks for our departments, including undergraduate enrollments (for some of the units), and other matters related to graduate applications and possible collaboration between programs. We are, however, being asked to address these concerns as autonomous departments, not as amalgamated units.

While this is certainly cause for celebration, we still remind everyone that we need to ensure that this kind of proposal is not brought to the table without fair and democratic consultation in the future. If we do not make significant changes to the way the administration at this university makes its decisions, our department is just as at risk as we were under the Dean’s Academic Plan. Unless we continue our fight to increase the transparency of the administration’s policies, we could very well be faced with a similar proposal in the near future.

For this reason, we highly encourage you to attend the UTEAU meeting on Monday, and help us to draft a document of our demands to present to the administration. More info can be found here.

Updates on the details of this news will follow as it unfolds!

– Julianne Kelso, Vice President

Posted on No Comments on Halloween Movie Night!

Halloween Movie Night!

thirst

EASSU will be hosting our annual Halloween movie night this year by screening Park Chan-wook’s “Thirst”, a vampire thriller! It will be in Sidney Smith room 2135 on October the 28th, at 8pm.  There’s no admission charge, and we’ll even have free pizza! This event is open to all students of all departments, so bring your friends for some Halloween fun!

Posted on No Comments on New Executive Team!

New Executive Team!

We had elections for our executive team last Thursday at our General Meeting – thanks to everyone who came out! We present to you our 2010/2011 exec team!

President: Michel Marion
Vice-President: Julianne Kelso
Secretary: Jessica Lee
Treasurer: Liz Cinco
Communications Coordinator: Sol Ramon
Class-representative Coordinator: Matthew Headland
External Affairs Coordinators: Jane Jhung and Youngsik Hwang
Junior Executive: Daniel Jung

The year is only just getting started, check back here soon for exciting events to come!