Teachers, students push for change at Trinity Western

By Frank Stirk

FOR AT least some students and faculty at Trinity Western University, the way that a harassment complaint against President Neil Snider was handled last fall exposes some serious flaws in how the university -- one of Canada's leading Christian post-secondary institutions -- is being run.

But there are also strong indications that the university's board of governors is serious about wanting to correct the problem.

The female complainant, who used to work on campus, had filed a complaint against Snider and TWU with the B.C. human rights tribunal in October -- just five weeks after he had revealed his decision to retire this coming June after 32 years at the helm.

In an open letter to the university community, board of governors chair Allan Hedberg said the woman had gone to the tribunal because when she "raised these concerns with University harassment officers, effective action was not taken to intervene."

Within two weeks, the matter was resolved informally. The woman withdrew her complaint after Snider apologized to her and the university promised to improve its policies and procedures in handling such cases.

But third-year humanities student Matt Jenkins, editor of the student newspaper Mars' Hill, is not satisfied. "I don't think the issue is about Snider," he says.

The fact that the complainant saw no recourse but to turn to the human rights tribunal, Jenkins contends, "points to a failure on the part of the university . . . to deal with those kind of issues. That complaint gets us into and points out a bigger issue of governance structures that are too small for us. We've outgrown them."

Jenkins believes the board's handling of the case underscores an ongoing failure to exercise servant-leadership, one of the university's core values. All too often, he claimed in an editorial, "those who voice dissent have been shut down and student calls for transparency and openness have gone unheard."

The result, he says, is "an atmosphere of uncertainty and doubt and questions and rumours that can't be substantiated or denied, because there's no information out there."

It is a frustration apparently shared by many faculty members.

"We had no access to the board," says faculty association chair Rick Sutcliffe, a professor in mathematics and computer science. "Typically, questions we would ask about governance were not answered."

One example is what Sutcliffe calls an "opaque" budget process in which faculty never saw the university's new budget until after it was presented to the board -- and even then they were allowed to see only "whatever portions of it applied [to us] at some later date."

Echoing Jenkins, Sutcliffe says the way it settled the Snider harassment complaint suggests a similar desire for secrecy. "There's lots of opinions about that, but they're not informed opinions, because we don't really know what was done."

Jenkins suspects -- and Sutcliffe agrees -- that one source of the problem is Trinity's rapid growth under Snider's tenure. In 1974, when he assumed the presidency, it was a two-year junior college with 340 students. Today it is a four-year, fully accredited liberals arts university with 3,500 students.

"Trinity grew enormously fast, but the infrastructure appropriate to an institution of its size today isn't in place," says Jenkins.

"We're not in a mode of wanting to engage in a debate with [Jenkins]," says TWU executive vice-president Guy Saffold, who nonetheless rejects any implied criticism that the university is not well-run, either now or in the past.

Saffold suggests that they are simply going through a unique phase. "When you put the maturation of the institution together with a presidential transition after 32 years and a harassment complaint," he says, "it's a situation that not surprisingly does raise concern."

Yet even the 25-member board of governors acknowledges that it has made mistakes in the past and that it needs to do better.

"Communication hasn't been great -- not out of a desire to keep things hidden, but more from the perspective of just [not] paying attention to it," admits Edmonton-based board member Bob Gordon.

Late last year, the board agreed to create a first-ever governance committee and named Gordon its chair. Over the next one to two years, it will review all of the university's governance practices and make recommendations.

At this point, the board is not ruling out any proposals for reform, including adding student and faculty representatives to the board. The litmus test for any idea, says Gordon, will be whether or not it contributes to making Trinity a world-class Christian university.

"And so what we want," he says, "are the governance structures that provide a strong confidence that TWU will continue as a faith-based institution and that our mission, our values, our operations -- everything -- need to reflect a biblical Christian perspective."

At initial meetings in January with the committee, both faculty and student representatives came away hopeful that some positive changes may be on the horizon.

"Not just the [student] council executive, but also other student leaders on campus were able to meet face to face with the board without . . . either Dr. Snider or another member of the President's Cabinet" acting as a sort of middleman, says Jenkins.

Sutcliffe adds: "I think that Bob [Gordon] and other board members realize that we have to do a little bit of growing up as an institution."

In compliance with the settlement reached in the complaint against Snider, Saffold says the board has also taken some immediate steps to plug the procedural gaps revealed by this incident.

"A very specific set of revised standards was developed for managing any process like that should it occur in the future and for reporting more regularly on the kinds of issues that are arising," he says.

As for Snider, the board has for the time being shelved plans to make him the university's first chancellor -- but not because of the harassment complaint. "It was important to many [presidential] candidates," Gordon says, "that decisions not be made into which they would not have an input."

The board is expected to announce on May 1 who it has chosen to become Trinity's new president.

Related stories:

Trinity U orders sensitivity training
University president Snider apologizes after harassment charge by female employee
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Trinity minority says harassment complaint not handled properly
James Moes, president of the Trinity Western University Student Association, has called for an independent third-party review of the chain of events and of the university's sexual-harassment complaint process. "We believe it is only after a doctor's diagnosis that we can understand the fitness of our body," said Moes in a prepared statement issued after news of the complaint hit the campus. Matthew Jenkins, editor of the TWU student newspaper, Mar's Hill, has also called for an independent review which, he wrote, "would show our broader community that TWU has nothing to hide."
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