UBC faculty file complaint over Gupta departure
The UBC faculty association has filed a complaint with the Privacy Commissioner of B.C. about the release of information concerning the departure of former president Arvind Gupta.
The complaint, filed by lawyers acting for the faculty association, alleges the university did not respond “accurately and completely” to a faculty association freedom of information request about meetings of the board and its committees that are held offschedule and for which no minutes are taken. Further, it alleges that some board members use nonuniversity emails for conducting university business, which means that information is not necessarily secure and that it is not captured for freedom of information requests. As well, those emails are often deleted.
Gupta left suddenly last August, for reasons that were not revealed. Since then, the board chairman has resigned in an academic freedom scandal, the finance committee chairman has stepped aside pending a court case in which he is trying to get a $1-million tax bill cancelled and the board as a whole has been criticized for conducting secret meetings with little documentation.
A freedom of information document release in January included several unredacted attachments, which included information showing undocumented meetings of small groups of board members. Gupta broke his silence after the documents were released, saying he decided to resign after a small group of board members said he had lost the full board’s support.
The faculty association is asking the privacy commissioner to investigate both the use of nonUBC emails to conduct university business and whether or not UBC released all of the information about board committee meetings that it was required to release.