Pike, Ruth: Blue Velvet Years: Memories of Governing Council

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MEMOIR:

Memoir pages are intended to provide a personal recollection of life at the University of Toronto or events in the author's life which he or she deemed significant. For this reason, these entries are entirely the work of the authors and are not subject to the normal fact-checking or editing of Encyclopedia entries. The editors request that the pages be approached accordingly.


Blue Velvet Years: Memories of Governing Council

Ruth Pike


When I got the phone call telling me I had been elected as one of the twelve academic members on Governing Council, I had little idea of what was in store for me. A casual visitor to a meeting of the Governing Council might come away with the erroneous impression that the job of a Governor is to rubber-stamp each item brought before the Council. Every Governor, however is required the serve on two or three committees or boards each year in addition to the Council. It is on those boards and committees that most of the work is done. Material that may later become a Council agenda item is received by the appropriate committee or board, discussed, debated, researched and carefully weighed, maybe returned for revision and again assessed, before being passed on to the Executive Committee which ultimately decides on the agenda for each Council meeting.

The addition to my workload was enormous. Meetings, meetings, meetings! During the academic years, 1993-1996, while I was a Governor, I was also was a member of the Executive Committee, the University Affairs Board, the Academic Policy and Programs Committee and the Academic Appeals Committee.

The work of the Academic Policy and Programs Committee was most closely aligned with my own professional interests and teaching. Part of the committee’s mandate was to receive the mandatory periodic evaluations of every unit or division in the University. Since much of my consulting practice, then and now, involved program evaluation, I picked up a lot of useful tips by studying how that process was done by so many others, in so many different disciplines.

Another part of the committee’s mandate was to review applications for changes in courses and programs. We considered at least three very major academic innovations during my tenure: the reorganization of the program in Physiotherapy to become a second-entry program; the launch of the first program at the University of Toronto to educate Nurse Practitioners; and most importantly, the merger of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) with the University of Toronto.

The appeals that reached the Academic Appeals Committee went far beyond My dog ate my homework cases. The Committee heard an appeal only after the case had been considered by the appellant’s faculty, college or school council. Some of the cases had serious implications for the careers, not only of the appellant, but also academics and any other students involved in the case.

One such case was that of a recent graduate from the Faculty of Medicine. She had initially failed one of her clinical rotations but was allowed to repeat it during the summer. This meant that her transcripts would indicate her initial failure as well as her final grade. She claimed that the only reason for her failure was a “poisoned atmosphere” created by her clinical team-mates, all male, an “atmosphere” that was ignored by her clinical and academic supervisors despite her repeated complaints. Although the removal of grades, good or bad, from transcripts is contrary to university policy, she asked that her transcript be revised so that it did not show a failure that she maintained was not really of her doing.

She told the panel that the men in her team made suggestive comments about other women in her presence and rolled their eyes or made faces when she answered questions on clinical rounds. She said this was so distressing that she could not concentrate and hence failed. If she could prove her claim, then her teammates, who were by then all interning in teaching hospitals, would have been shown to be guilty of sexual harassment as defined by the Ontario Human Rights Commission and so would her supervisors because they had done nothing to rectify the situation. A further complication to the hearing was the presence of a group of her supporters who intended to use her victory as irrefutable proof of their contention that there was systemic discrimination against women in the Faculty of Medicine.

The room in which the hearing took place was crowded. There were lawyers representing the complainant, all the individuals against whom she had complained and the representatives of each of the academic units involved and of the University. In the few dull moments of the hearings I amused myself by calculating the cost per minute of legal fees, surely thousands of dollars besides the time cost of the faculty members of the Appeals Committee, during the days of hearings.

After hearing all the testimony, the committee concluded that there was no causal relationship between the alleged poisoned atmosphere and her mark. She simply did not perform well during the rotation. Since her failing grade was justifiable, the appeal was rejected. Grades on transcripts are still recorded with indelible ink.

There was more to being a governor than just committee work. The appointment also entailed attendance at some ceremonial and social functions where I could swan around in a gorgeous blue velvet academic robe that identified me as a Governor. Sometimes I would meet people I had known as a student at the University, meetings that triggered both good and bad memories.

Peter Munk and Avie Bennett, who received honorary degrees at convocations I attended, made reference to former discriminatory practices at the university. When we were undergraduates, the university was predominately white, Anglo-Saxon and Christian. There may have been covert quotas in hiring and admission practices and there was unquestionably overt social discrimination. Both men affirmed that they were Jewish and noted that their presence on the platform, like mine, was a clear indication that the university was now run on much more equitable principles.

My encounters with the rich and famous at University events provided me with an unending source of dinner table talk. I can truthfully state, for example, that I have appeared on the stage with Karen Kain. No, not to dance, she sat beside me at a Convocation, a few chairs away from Alice Munro.

When I told my sister, a research associate at the Jewish Museum in New York, that I was going to meet Mavis Gallant, she said that her museum had provided her with material on Alfred Dreyfus but had heard nothing further. During the formal dinner that was part of the honorary degree event, I asked Dr. Gallant about the current status of her project. She thought for a moment and then replied with a straight face, “ That is on the top shelf of my linen closet.”

Some Council events led to social engagements I would not have had otherwise. When the Hong Kong Bank of Canada gave a substantial donation to the University, I conversed with one of the invited guests at the reception that followed. She called me a few days later to invite me to her home for lunch.

When I entered the house and looked around, I felt as if I had entered a Hollywood movie. My hostess was a serious collector of Art Deco furniture and objects. She sometimes vied, I was told, with Barbara Streisand at important Deco auctions and her home bore evidence of her successful bidding. The air of unreality was heightened when it started to rain during a tour of her terraced gardens. As soon as the first raindrop fell, a butler magically appeared with two large black umbrellas and escorted us, along with the two other guests, members of the Chinese Trade Commission, back to the house.

The same butler served lunch at a table in the living room, a room that had, among other things, a waterfall that connected somehow to the indoor-outdoor swimming pool and a mural that had once graced the First Class dining room in the SS Normandie. As we nibbled on quail eggs and other exotic delicacies, I waited expectantly but Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers who were surely somewhere behind the silver grand piano in the far corner never made an appearance.

I’m grateful to my former colleague, the late Claude Brodeur, who convinced me to stand for Governing Council and campaigned on my behalf while I was on sabbatical in Japan. The experience opened windows on aspects of the university that I had not seen or even suspected in all my years as a student and academic. Claude gave me the rare gift of a true growth experience just as I was reaching the age of mandatory retirement.