There will be a SPECIAL EMERGENCY MEMBERS DROP-IN MEETING on the outrageous enrollment suspensions which have been announced for 20 programs at Keele and Glendon -- Thurs Feb 19 at noon:  https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81085773000?pwd=MeH9IOCBRtfQU9PTfNibdiQaH0NREE.1 

The programs now facing enrolment suspensions for fall 2025, as of Feb 18, are:

At Glendon:

• Sociology
• Global History and Justice
• English
• Spanish and Latin American Cultures and Societies

 At Keele:

• German Studies
• Italian Studies 
• Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian Studies 
• Spanish Studies
• Gender and Women's Studies (GWST) 
• Sexuality Studies (SXST)
• Classics 
• Classical Studies 
• East Asian Studies 
• Hellenic Studies 
• Indigenous Studies 
• Jewish Studies
• Religious Studies
• Environmental Biology Undergraduate Program
• Biomedical Physics Undergraduate Program
• Masters in Leadership and Community Engagement, in the Faculty of Education

YUFA protests and is mobilizing against the university administration’s recent top-down announcements that enrollments are to be suspended for 20 programs next fall. York’s strengths and equity priorities must be upheld to bolster our university’s reputation in the face of provincial underfunding. Accounting-oriented program cuts do violence to the academic integrity of carefully-constructed programs that offer important electives to students across the university, sustain interdisciplinary research units, and are integrated with graduate studies. These interrelationships are the source of York’s proud traditions of critical thinking, equity, and social justice.

The York University administration has made a number of bad financial choices and poor decisions which are decimating York’s staff, reputation, student recruiting, and academic offerings.

• The salary budget for upper-administration positions and consultants has risen  more than 47 % since 2022, while staff and faculty salaries have risen less than 3%.  The Ontario Auditor General’s 2023 report on York University also pointed out that the York administration has made multi-million dollar capital investments (such as borrowing millions to build the Markham campus)  without proper business cases or risk analyses.
• Rather than prioritizing student recruiting, residences, advising, and student services, York takes no responsibility for the university’s poor reputation.  Cutting undergraduate program admissions is further evidence of short-sighted, self-inflicted harms to York’s reputation and relevance to the communities the university serves.
• York is expanding huge online courses, including required first-year  General Education courses, while removing options for smaller, more personalized courses which students appreciate and professors cite as pedagogically much better.
• The university’s Board of Governors, in contravention of its own rules, does not  reflect the community in which York is situated and the communities in which it participates, so it is hampered in its ability to uphold York’s role in the life of these local, national and international communities.
• Investment income is being used to service debt rather than to sustain academic programs including those focusing on equity, diversity, inclusion, justice, reconciliation, and progressive social values, which York has touted for years as its priorities.
• Seven York faculty members (SRCs)  have been fired since last summer;  hundreds of staff members have accepted a retirement buyout and are not being replaced; necessary  funding for a new York U. medical school is not assured. 

Suspending admission to academic programs and cutting teachers and staff is exactly the wrong way to uphold York’s commitment to providing up-to-date, socially relevant, equity-focused university education for all Ontarians.   

The York University Faculty Association calls on York’s administration to walk back these cuts and focus on building upon York’s strengths while improving the Board of Governors’ diversity and its remediation of troubling financial mismanagement at York.