by Lexey Burns, Editor-in-Chief

Adam Kirkwood has been at Laurentian since 2014 and is not happy with how the university has been treating students’ concerns about its insolvency issue. 

Kirkwood completed his undergrad in Environmental Science and Geography, earned a masters in Biology, and is now working towards a Ph.D. in Boreal Ecology, all at Laurentian. 

Kirkwood had applied for funding for his research into permafrost landscapes in northern Ontario and in 2020 was awarded a $13,750 fellowship grant from Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Canada.

WCS Canada gave the money to Laurentian “to hold.” 

When the university announced insolvency, Kirkwood said that he “didn’t understand what insolvency was or what CCAA protection was and then I started talking to other students and faculty,” he said. 

“A few days later, some of the credit card statements had been declined.” 

After trying to send out samples to another university, Kirkwood realized “that was the first indication that there would be serious financial restraints for research.” 

“Our funds are a lot more restricted now so we have to apply to be able to spend the money that we already secured for ourselves or for our research project,” Kirkwood said.

Kirkwood said that he has spent “a few thousand dollars” of the $13,000 but still has $9,000-$10,000 remaining that “I don’t know if I’ll be allowed to spend.” 

Kirkwood says that students who have won grants and professors who’ve obtained multi-million dollar research grants “are not considered creditors so we don’t know if we’re going to get that money back.”

“A lot of people are throwing the word ‘theft’ around, which I don’t disagree with,” Kirkwood said 

Senate ignores questions

At Laurentian’s Senate meeting last Tuesday, Kirkwood said he attempted to ask a question at the beginning of the meeting, but responses were eventually deferred until later on the agenda. 

“We waited four hours on the Senate meeting… until we got to speak,” he said. “So we [the 20+ graduate students in attendance] all started asking our questions and we didn’t get any answers, we essentially got deflections of the question or we got metaphorical not answers.”

The scheduled Senate meeting end time was 6:00 pm but was extended by a vote from the Senate. 

“President Hache voted against continuing the meeting while students were in the middle of asking questions,” Kirkwood said. 

But the Senate meeting was only the beginning. Last Friday, “the Board of Governors meeting was a completely different story.” 

Kirkwood explains how one of the governors ceded their time to allow Kirkwood to speak. Kirkwood posed three different questions about stipends, program extensions, and accountability and “after the third question, when I was giving a quick conclusion, the chair of the board Claude Lacroix, interrupted me and said that he’d actually made a mistake in letting me speak.”

“I wasn’t on the agenda and because I wasn’t on the agenda you have to have written notification five days before the meeting to be able to speak.” 

He said that another Governor, Ashley Thompson, tried to cede his time to let another student speak “and the chair didn’t let him speak.” 

“[The chair] said that Governors weren’t allowed to cede their time.” 

Kirkwood’s struggles follow Laurentian President Robert Hache’s claims that “the students come first at Laurentian.” 

“I don’t understand how the president can say, and how he can publish in articles that ‘students come first.” 

“Here is a group of students, both graduate and undergraduate, trying to address the president and the Board of Governors, and they don’t let us speak,” he said. 

“After I asked my questions, the host of the meeting muted my mic and turned off my camera… I have a screenshot saying that ‘the host has removed your camera privileges,’” Kirkwood said. 

“They’ve taken no accountability and they haven’t accepted responsibility for this financial crisis and… they say ‘oh we’re in this together’ and ‘we’ll get through this as a community’ but myself and faculty that I’ve talked to, and staff and students we find this—first of all—not true, and a bit disrespectful because we’re the ones that are facing the consequences.”

“Our faculty, our supervisors are going to be the ones that are laid off, our programs are going to be the ones that are cut but then what consequences are senior administration facing?” he asks. 

“There is no university without students and there is no research or teaching without faculty.”