If you are a student at Glendon, you have probably chosen to come here for the small community feel, bilingual experience, and beautiful campus. We believe all of these things that make Glendon special would be lost if York’s proposal comes to pass.
The Glendon College Student Union is strongly opposed to this plan. Please read more about their position here:
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York’s proposal doesn’t simply involve moving Glendon to Keele, but also eliminating Glendon as a separate faculty. While the proposal would take several years to accomplish and would probably be implemented after you graduate, it could mean that over the course of your time at Glendon, you would be moved to the Keele campus and would have to complete your course requirements by taking courses offered through Keele faculties. This means that you, and future potential Glendon students, would lose the small community experience that makes Glendon so enriching. Classes at the Keele campus tend to be much larger, and while there are more course offerings, this also means that it is harder to make lasting ties from semester to semester with your professors and classmates. Smaller class sizes at Glendon not only improve your learning experience, but also mean that it is easier to form lasting connections with professors and peers that help students secure letters of reference and professional contacts.
Interim Provost Laina Bay-Cheng believes that transforming Glendon into a French-language college at Keele will enable greater support for the Francophone community at York. However, in our view, this involves a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes Glendon special. Glendon is not simply a home for French-language courses, but rather a community where bilingualism and multilingualism flourishes in classrooms, campus spaces, and daily interactions. Glendon affords students the opportunity to take courses in both French and English with a peer group that is also interested in bilingualism. This would be lost with a transition to Keele, where former Glendon students would take English-language courses that are no longer part of the bilingual ecosystem of the Glendon campus.
Glendon, as a separate campus and faculty, not only allows students to take courses with their peers in both French and English, but also to interact with fellow students, professors, staff, and administrators in both French and English on a regular basis. That is, even if a student isn’t taking a course in French with a particular professor, they may speak to them in French in the hallways or at community events. They can work with Frost Librarians or receive assistance in French at all of Glendon’s student services offices, such as Academic and Financial Services. When they go to the Glendon Athletic Centre or if they live in the student residences on campus, they can expect to interact with their peers in either French and English, or both.
In short, Glendon’s smaller size and distinct campus make possible an ecosystem that promotes bilingualism as a living reality. This would definitely be lost with a move to Keele, where Francophone professors and students would find themselves isolated in a much larger, overwhelmingly Anglophone environment.
At the same time, Anglophone students who come to Glendon because they want to advance their skills in French would no longer have the campus-wide, supportive spaces that are essential for this learning. Even if there is a particular building on the Keele campus set aside for Glendon College, French would no longer be part of the daily reality for students as they attend undergraduate events, navigate the campus, interact with peers, or access student services. We do not think that a dedicated French-language space at the Keele campus is in any way equivalent to the organic, bilingual ecosystem on the Glendon campus.
If you’re concerned about this proposal, please write to York’s Interim President Philipps, Interim Provost/Vice President Academic Bay-Cheng, and the Board of Governors. Please also consider submitting a testimonial about what makes being a student at Glendon so special to you and why you think it should be preserved as a distinct faculty and campus.