By Amit Shilton
t’s hard to imagine anyone throwing around a figure like $10 million and then saying it’s not about the money. That’s the line being used by Chris Avenir when describing the class action lawsuit filed against Ryerson on Avenir’s behalf. Avenir would earn $250,000 from the suit, but he says that’s not his motivation. Not even his lawyer will comment about the $10 million figure. “It’s not monetary gain whatsoever,” Avenir said. The huge dollar figure, the largest suit Ryerson’s been threatened with, seems to be just that, a threat. More than anything, it comes across as a call to draw attention and to have an issue taken seriously. Ryerson is the only one of the Toronto universities whose policy doesn’t open the door for students to seek legal representation before the Senate level. It’s a flaw in Policy 60 everyone else seems to have addressed and one Ryerson doesn’t really care about. Both Ryerson’s legal counsel, Julia Hanigsberg, and President Sheldon Levy don’t see an issue with the school’s current policy. The money and the school’s reputation on the line seem to have gotten most of the attention, which is important, but not the gist of the message being sent. “We’re a $400-million budget institution and big institutions face legal issues and that’s just how it is,” Hanigsberg said. “That is in a sense just a cost of doing business in our world.” Let’s hope they don’t miss the point. There’s no real winners or losers in this case. Ryerson students are already losing.
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