The following email has been sent to the all-staff email list at the University of Auckland. Dawn has finally refreshed her contract and is contracted another 5 years as Vice-Chancellor. Her ideology of consolidation and so-called efficiency has cost this institution valuable professional staff and countless years of institutional knowledge. Our teams 'lucky enough' to have survived the last round of redundancies are now facing the prospect of another restructure. This will not stand again. The arts faculty has been decimated, there are issues with timetabling, increased workloads for staff, decreased quality and definition of their education for students. It was fast-tracked for the arts, and we know it'll happen again.
No more sham consultations. Stop steamrolling our people. We are the university.
To our colleagues in Law and Business & Economics, we stand with you. Be in touch if you want to share your thoughts.
Staff-focused Q&A on proposed new faculty arrangements: Business and Economics, Law
all-staff-request@list.auckland.ac.nz on behalf of Dawn Freshwatervice-chancellor@auckland.ac.nz all-staff Mailing List all-staff@list.auckland.ac.nz
Kia ora tātou
Earlier today I met with colleagues from the Faculties of Law and Business & Economics to share a proposal to establish a combined faculty. This proposal responds to feedback from the consultation process earlier this year, relating to new faculty arrangements, as well as a range of other external and internal factors.
The proposed new arrangement is designed to retain and build on the unique identities and strengths of both faculties, ensuring the legacy and prominence of the Auckland Law School and Auckland Business School remain.
Under the proposal two law departments would be created; one focusing on private law and one focusing on public law. Members of the current Department of Commercial Law in the Business School would become members of the private law department in the Law School. Each department would have a Head of Department with one of these also being the Dean of Law, who would report to the Dean of the combined Faculty, and the other Head also being the Deputy Dean of Law. The current Dean of the Faculty of Business & Economics would be the Dean of the combined faculty.
I intend appointing a new Acting Dean of Law to lead the Law School from the completion of the term of the current Acting Dean. In the event the proposal is adopted, the term of the Acting Dean would continue through the transition phase until the appointment of the new Dean of Law.
We are now inviting feedback on this proposal, and I encourage you to participate in this important discussion.
The online feedback form will be available online until 5pm on Monday 20 January 2025. The extended consultation period (10 weeks) reflects the time of year and that many staff will be likely to be on leave for some of this period. You can find out more about the proposal and its rationale, and download the Proposal Document, on the Notice page, and also view the detailed staff FAQs.
Thank you for your ongoing commitment and insights as we continue to strengthen our University for the future.
Ngā mihi
Dawn
Professor Dawn Freshwater
Vice-Chancellor
Source: Direct Message
Advice from a friend: my tips for making a feedback submission as someone who was on the committee that did decision making about the previous faculty don’t be super emotional, if you write a submission cussing dawn etc out there’s no point and won’t be taken into account. you can have emotion but don’t make that the crux of your submission. be actually logical with your submission, outline the purpose of wanting them to be seperate talk about your autonomy within your faculties, don’t waste your breath cussing them out about how it’s for cutting costs blah blah talk about PRACTICAL things.
Source: Reddit
Kia Ora,
Anonymous Member who made this post and all other interested students reading this comment. My name is FaAfuhia Fia, and I am your student representative on the University Council. I am a law student, so this impacts me.
I want to first say that I have not received any prior notice of this proposal. I would encourage interested parties to engage in the consultation process and express their thoughts. I have a personal opinion on this matter; however, it would be poor governance practice for me to influence you. I will be making my own submission and, therefore, encourage you to do the same.
It is important to note that any member of the Public can observe the University Council's proceedings when it decides on the proposal on the 17th of March 2025. So come along. I beg you to engage with the process. My influence on other Council Members to vote in a particular way is dictated by the QUALITY AND QUANTITY of the consultation data. So please do engage with the process.
THE LINK BELOW WILL DIRECT YOU TO THE INFO & TO MAKE A SUBMISSION
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/notices/2024/proposed-new-faculty-business-economics-law.html
Follow my Instagram @ uoa_council_rep
I am still in the process of onboarding onto Council as my term does not formally begin until the 9th of December, 2024.
hellooo!! i saw your recent post on the law faculty changes, and i wanted to dm my thoughts (as a law/arts student currently working in family law, having worked in criminal)
- i am personally very worried this decision will encourage people (by the nature of the faculty) away from social advocacy pathways
- corporate pathways are already heavily prioritised within the faculty and i fear this will only make it worse
- i also worry that this will result in cuts to courses which are not corporate in nature/important subjects which are not necessarily tied to practice (e.g. family law, social welfare law, race and the law etc)
The Law School's buildings are leased, not owned by the University. Ending the lease would save money. The University wanted to rehouse the Law School in Old Government House — a very stupid idea that was successfully resisted by the Staff Common Room Club. I suppose they will find space somewhere in OGGB. The Library will disappear, just as the Fine Arts, Music, and Architecture and Planning Libraries did.
It's a cost cutting thing.
The point is to cut the number of courses offered for small classes so to create the illusion of choice of courses offered they combine faculties so that the list of courses offered by a singular faculty is still flushed.
They did the same thing with design and engineering. Two very different degrees. Designers make it look pretty so that people want to buy it engineers figure out how to make it work. Its like saying architecture and civil engineering is basically the same thing.
Big classes means less teaching staff is needed so salaries to pay lecturers.
Reply: I mean they basically did do that with architecture and civil engineering because architecture is also part of the merger with engineering
They did this at UC, squished business into our law building and we lost our dedicated law library (sounds like a stupid whinge but there is no way to actually study in the main library, for noise and space).
Kick up against it, we regretted our silence.
Does this mean they get to lay a bunch of people off?
[u/IHaveAChairWawawewa]
That's what's happening with the Arts/CAI/Ed&SW merger, so likely. It's about cost cutting - merging means they have a way to cut professional staff jobs (and increase the workload for the ones remaining).
The University seems to have a knack for seeking feedback and conducting consultation processes that don’t do anything or make any difference. Why doesn’t dawn save everyone’s time by shutting the survey monkey and doing whatever she wants because that is what’s going to happen regardless. Saw it already with Arts/EDSW/CAI.
Agree, the consultation period being in the middle of the marking period and then over the summer break for both staff and students feels like a dodgy move too.
Dawn is insane. Is there really any demand for this?!
This is crazy. No one wanted this in arts, no one wants this here either. Students and staff are in a fizz rn.
As someone who is studying towards degrees in both faculties, apart from the commercial law papers there is no crossover between the two whatsoever for a move like this to even make sense
All I can say is I'm glad I'm almost done with my studies bc this is a scummy move
1000% second this and on top, I now work in a commercial law firm. BUT LAW & BUSINESS ARE SO DIFFERENT. This is a terrible idea.
There are already problems in the law faculty with enrolling in papers, etc, and already a heavy commercial focus. As a BCom/Law student who wanted to go into corporate law, I did love the private law papers but the law school already needs more variety, this will just squash any variety it does have. So dumb.
And arts, fine arts, education and social work all together too. Just about the only two left unmerged so far are Science and Medical Science which I suspect is coming
My mate works for Law, and said all the staff are pissed and completely against this. Dawns the only one who wants it
Absolutely fucking not. There aren't enough non-commercial law electives as is. Combining with the business school and making HALF of the faculty about private law is absolutely insane. The law school already tries to funnel people to big commercial law firms; this will just screw everyone with any kind of interest in criminal, family, environmental, international, or constitutional law.
Don't know what I expected tbh, not like the law school actually cares about anything other than making sure the big firms get their 200 applicants per year.
How does this benefit us as students? Is there something I'm missing or is "The proposed new arrangement is designed to retain and build on the unique identities and strengths of both faculties, ensuring the legacy and prominence of the Auckland Law School and Auckland Business School remain." just corporate jargon that means nothing?
The thing I’m thinking about is how they’ll manage the admin side of things ? So many law students already don’t manage to secure the electives they want because they fill up so fast and there are SO many students who do the business courses so it sounds like it’ll be a mess all around. Unless they’ve got a proper plan for how they’ll manage it all.