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..breathing darkroom chemicals since 1976

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1996 Alas poor Susan,
we knew her...

 

well, not really.

...And just like that, she’s gone. Not
so much as a “by your leave,” just a
brief letter saying, in effect, “I quit,” and
she's out of here.

I'm referring, of course, to our
esteemed, and now ex, president of
DC, Dr. Susan Hunter-Harvey. Her
Douglas email
account canceled,
her cellular phone
returned.After Bill Day’s monumental
(and, it seemed, never-ending) reign as
president, Susan Hunter-Harvey’s nine
months seem like no more than a blip
in the continuum.

What went wrong? Why, after such a
lengthy process to select the perfect
president, did Hunter-Harvey resign,
having served less than a year in office?

The official scuttlebutt is that
nobody knows nothing except for
Hunter-Harvey, and she’s not talking,
least of all to the OP. Everybody on the
fourth floor looks suitably shocked
over her abrupt departure, and the
phrase “I don’t know” rings from
behind every office door and hangs on
every lip, like they're afraid that people
might hold them personally responsible
for Harvey-Hunter’s departure.

She was doing a great job, they say.
She was a great person, they say. There
were a few problems, sure, but those

were just transitional glitches after so many
years of Bill Day. Give it time, and things will
function smoothly.

But did they? Or was she thwarted at
every turn by the phantom of Mr. Day? The
channels of power cut deep after 20 years, and
it’s tough to change their course, especially
within a year.And, by her own admission, she
spent most of her time playing figure-head-
networking with other BC colleges, meeting
local businesspeople, sucking up to the
government. How can you establish authority
within an institution if you’re always being
shuttled off to another function, another
meeting?

Oh, | wouldn’t go as far as to-say that she
was deliberately Shanghaied by petty bureau-
crats afraid for their own positions. Rather, |
would say that the course she followed,
“meeting with others such as college presi-
dents from around the province to ensure the
entire post-secondary system functions
effectively” kept her focus on the higher levels
of administration. Hunter-Harvey admitted
that “The building of partnerships between the
college, business, government, labour and
many international interests requires a great
deal of time and effort.” Perhaps it took too
much time. Too much effort. Perhaps she
would have been better served to look first to
her own college, partnership building be
damned, at least until she had established
herself.

The circumstances surrounding her

appointment as president were hectic.
Besides all the other responsibilities of her
office, the school was going through major
restructuring and reorganization, the last
hurrah of the outgoing Day. Imagine
hopping into a washing machine on the
spin cycle, and you’ve got some idea what
it must have been like sitting down in that
presidential chair for the first time.And by
spending a great deal of time and effort on
things happening outside the college, |
believe that she lost sight of what was
happening inside of the college, just long
enough for everyone to return to what
they were doing before she arrived. She
held everyone’s attention, if only for a
moment, and instead of calling people to
her, she let them go back to the way they
were before. Following old streambeds
instead of forging new ones.

Which is too bad, because | liked her,
and | liked a lot of what she stood for. She
dreamed of dragging Douglas into the
future, but discovered that she had to drag
the college- out of the past first.And she
failed. Oh, she accomplished some good
things, but she failed to change the course
of an institution caught in a twenty-year
deep rut. She suffered the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune, but ended
her troubles after a mere nine months.

Alas poor Susan. There are people who
mourn your leaving, even if we didn’t really
know you.

 

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