Sir Wilfrid would be irked by café firing

If truth really conquered all, as goes the motto of Wilfrid Laurier University, Sandor Dosman would get a grovelling apology and his job back, because the truth of his recent firing is that it was for sweet boo all.

But with due regard to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the great Canadian prime minister after whom the school is named and who once famously said “Canada is free and freedom is its nationality,” this is 2016 and that ain’t so anymore.

Dosman is the fellow whose contract to run the Veritas Café for the university’s graduate students was abruptly cancelled Dec. 12 apparently because he ran a cheeky Facebook ad for new staff.

The ad was so obviously a jokey, meant-in-fun effort that it is painful even to explain.

In it, Dosman said he was seeking “a new slave (fulltime staff member) to boss (mentor) … ,” established his modern bona fides with an approving nod to man buns and tattoos, and added with disarming candour that “the pay is crap unless you’re really good then it’s just ok.”

He explained what the café sold — “wake up juice,” in other words coffee, “confidence booster,” or beer, “dancing liquid,” or booze, and “life fuel,” the omnipresent paninis, wraps and salads.

And he suggested that having a food-safety certificate would help the prospective candidate because “we try not to kill our customers.”

There isn’t a serious line in it.

But according to CTV News last week, an anonymous person using the handle @_coffeeWITCH tweeted the university in complaint, and on Nov. 9, the school tweeted back that it was “looking into it.” A few days later, the complainant appears to have inquired again, and Laurier tweeted, “Yes, the matter has been addressed & Veritas Café is closed until further notice. Details will be made public once finalized.”

(Those tweets from the university have since disappeared, and there appears to be no Twitter user with that handle.)

One wonders: What did the complainant complain about? Was it by chance the use of the word “slave”? Is even the innocuous use of such words verboten on university campuses now? Was Dosman deemed to have used oppressive language?

Or he did offend @_coffeeWITCH’s sense of safety by invoking homicidal violence? Was the complainant, God forbid, traumatized?

We’ ll never know, of course.

The Graduate Students Association, the top-heavy organization (it has a ninemember “management team,” which works out to about one administrator to every 166 grad students) that pulled the trigger on Dosman, on Monday issued a statement assuring its many critics that “we would not sever the relationship without there having been clear opportunities for training, education and personal growth throughout the duration of the contract,” nicely managing to suggest that Dosman had a history of bad behaviour.

And if only the GSA could talk, this statement purported to rue.

But, the press release said, “We cannot discuss contractual and behavioural matters or refute accusations being made in the manner in which we would like. We honour the confidentiality of all members of our community who have been affected over the course of our service provision contract.” There, you see? Feel better? The missive was signed by Samantha Deeming, who grandly bills herself as “President and CEO” of the GSA, Gautam Khanna, the elected unpaid chair of the board, and Ellen Ménage, who is executive director and COO.

(Laurier has about 1,500 grad students. Deeming is paid for 25 hours of GSA work a week at $19 an hour, and the other executives, it appears from the GSA website, work between 10 and 15 paid hours a week. These hardly seem jobs worthy of a CEO or COO and three vicepresidents. None of them was elected, at least as the word is commonly understood.

Deeming, according to the student newspaper The Cord, was the only candidate to apply for her job. She is a former student union executive and has been a student at Laurier since 2009. She is now a full-time graduate student. The others, it appears, also applied for their jobs.)

The university itself is in lockstep with the GSA. It issued a statement early on in the disgrace, saying only that the association had approached the school “to share concerns expressed to it about the job ad and the decision that the GSA had reached.

“Given the importance that Laurier places on being an inclusive, welcoming and respectful community, the university supported the direction that the GSA chose to take,” its statement said in part.

Lori Chalmers Morrison, the associate director of communications, was exceptionally helpful Monday, but failed to answer my question about what it was in the ad that contravened Laurier’s desire to be “inclusive, welcoming and respectful.”

It was, according to what Dosman told The Cord, board chair Khanna who took him aside, showed him the ad and told him that because of it, his contract was being terminated, effective immediately. Dosman said he was then frogmarched back to the café to get his cash and debit machines and escorted off the campus.

He had been running the café for four years. The campus reaction to news of his firing was overwhelmingly angry; a petition to get him his job back had almost 2,400 signatures as of late Monday.

As for Sir Wilfrid, he is buried in Ottawa, in a lovely tomb. His undoubted rolling about at all of this from the grave won’t be noticed.