On Wednesday, May 29, McGill University will celebrate convocation by awarding diplomas to a law class who did not receive grades for their last term of work and who therefore did not meet the graduation requirements of the diploma. In doing so, McGill is violating its own statutes and regulations. Normally, the Faculty Council must review the grades and vote on their adoption, and do the same for the list of graduating students, before degrees can be awarded. For the first time in the history of the Faculty, this was not done.
This situation is not without consequences for “graduated” law students who will seek to obtain professional credentials, because they will receive a piece of paper which cannot attest to the obtaining of a diploma.
This unprecedented violation of the conditions for obtaining a diploma can be explained by a single reason: McGill has refused to negotiate for four weeks while its law professors are on strike. The McGill administration preferred to devote its efforts to circumventing the rules specific to graduation rather than negotiating a collective agreement in good faith.
The McGill Association of Law Professors (AMPD) is the first faculty union in the history of McGill University, and its administration has fought our existence tooth and nail. It is using public funds to challenge the accreditation granted by the Administrative Labor Tribunal of Quebec on November 7, 2022. The AMPD is seeking to negotiate its first collective agreement since that date. Yet the McGill administration is dragging its feet and asking us to wait until 2025 for an agreement, which is why we ultimately chose to strike. On April 9, the AMPD warned the administration that, without an agreement in principle, an indefinite strike would begin on April 24.
This schedule aimed not to interrupt classes and exams, but only the correction and awarding of grades. Hence the response from the McGill administration: we will ignore your strike and pretend that we can issue degrees without you.
This response is appalling. Turning a deaf ear and getting bogged down in illegitimate machinations to circumvent our strike is symptomatic of deeper dysfunctions that we have observed within the University and which are also the subject of several of our demands. We are also dismayed by the fact that the same administrators who tell us that the cupboards are empty grant themselves salaries higher than those of the Prime Minister of Quebec and the Prime Minister of Canada.
The McGill administration’s desire to break with the basic principles of integrity in awarding degrees shows how far it has strayed from good governance. It also undermines academic and teaching freedom. Such contempt for the work of professors weakens what makes the university strong. It reflects a worrying fundamental movement in the world of higher education, which explains why sister associations in the universities of Quebec and Canada support us so generously and provide us with the means to resist the tactics anti-union activists at McGill. We never imagined that we would have to fight for diplomas to be awarded only if the educational conditions are met, but that is where we are.