Administration doesn’t care about Algonquin’s students

Re: Algonquin College Students’ Association puts pressure on politicians to end the faculty strike, Nov. 3.

The notion that students “don’t really care how (the dispute ends), we just want to be back in class” is not one shared by me or my fellow students in the Algonquin animation program.

Our desks are falling apart, chairs are broken, cameras for filming are faulty or simply do not work, and our professors are overworked and underpaid. Algonquin administration claims that it doesn’t have the money to hire full-time professors or buy new equipment, yet it is renovating an entire building that did not need it. College president Cheryl Jensen makes triple what the average full-time professor makes.

I have attended two programs at Algonquin: baking and pastry arts in 2013, and now animation in 2017. I have had friends and family take various programs. Many of us feel the same: Algonquin administration does not care about its students.

Its decisions make things difficult for us, or outright harm our education. It treats professors poorly; they often have to go out of their way to fix the mistakes the administration has made.

Maybe I am speaking for the minority, but I feel that students don’t want politicians to force an end to the strike. We want the administration to stop treating our colleges as businessfirst and places of education last. Heather Maranta, second-year animation student, Ottawa