By Luma Muhtadie
The 13th floor office in Jorgenson Hall, which normally has an open-door policy, has been locked for over three weeks, and Ryerson’s administration won’t say why. Blinds are sometimes closed and visitors must ring a doorbell to be admitted.
RyeSAC president Odelia Bay and v.p. finance Ken Marciniec first noticed the clampdown on Jan. 16 during a routine visit to the office. When asked last Friday why the doors were locked, Wayne Higgins, assistant to Errol Aspevig v.p. academic, peered through a small opening in the door and said “I don’t know,” before shutting it again.
Neither Linda Grayson v.p. administration nor Aspevig have made themselves available for comment.
Ryerson president Claude Lajeunesse refused to comment yesterday on why they have chosen to restrict public access.
“It’s locked when we feel that it should be locked,” said Lajeunesse.
“He also said that RyeSAC has given no indication that they intend to occupy Ryerson’s administrative floor.
“RyeSAC has not told us anything like this,” said Lajeunesse. “They certainly haven’t sent that message to me.”
Michael Doucet, president of the Ryerson Faculty Association, said the administration has been known to lock its doors in the past.
“They usually do that around the (Students’ National) Day of Action,” he said. “But they’ve done it much earlier this year, I think because of what happened at Queen’s and Guelph.”
For five days, students at Queen’s University in Kingston occupied rooms near the office of Principal William Leggett, protesting his support of deregulated tuition fees.
Not long after, a similarly motivated occupation of administrative offices was carried out at the University of Guelph. It was shut down within 12 hours.
RyeSAC v.p. education Alex Lisman made no promises when the administration asked for RyeSAC’s cooperation in maintaining peace at Ryerson.
“She (Grayson) asked us point-blank to guarantee that we wouldn’t do any protesting around deregulations,” he said. “More specifically, she wanted us to assure her that we wouldn’t mirror the activities of Queen’s students.”
Lisman said RyeSAC has no plans of occupying offices at this point, but doesn’t know the intentions of all the students.
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