Yuri Fulmer’s guide to being an apolitical chancellor while leading the BC Conservatives
Rula (she/her) // Contributor
Andrei Gueco (he/him) // Illustrator
Should the hand that signs our degrees be the same one flipping off the NDP? The answer is irrelevant. Yuri Fulmer’s latest donation persuaded the university to let him keep the chancellor’s robes after winning the BC Conservative leadership. In fact, when the Courier humbly pointed out that it may be hard for the chancellor to represent the university’s apolitical principles by being a politician—despite his generous write-off—Mr. Fulmer came up with a compromise: when in chancellor mode, he shall wear his robes; when in trashing-the-NDP mode, no robes. “Conflict of interest is a state of mind and robes,” he explained.
Although the outfit strategy kept Mr. Fulmer’s politics off campus at first, once his party’s policy platform started to take shape, the boundaries of this public institution proved to be as effective as trying to designate a non-pee area in a pool.
The first thing to go was the rainbow crosswalk; a large blue rectangle with a capital “C” in the middle suddenly took its place. This new aesthetic started to take over the facade of the university’s tree-named buildings. “C as in Capilano, of course,” assured the chancellor. Next came land acknowledgment designated areas: “When people do land acknowledgements in public events, those who are uncomfortable hearing them have no other option,” Mr. Fulmer empathized. “But, we’ve found the perfect spot for people to go and acknowledge away!” he announced, pointing at the trail behind parking lot D.
A few months in—after Mr. Fulmer’s lower tax initiatives finally protected the wealth that corporations and higher-income households worked so hard to hoard—he dismissed the broken-record narrative of the post-secondary education system being ‘under-funded’ for decades and in crisis due to the resulting ‘over-reliance’ on international tuition. Instead, he called it what it “really” is: an individual problem. “If a university is running on a deficit, they are simply spending too much money, and if a student can’t afford their tuition, they are simply not working hard enough,” he spelled out.
Of course, the chancellor wouldn’t have built his A&W empire by merely naming the obvious. Mr. Fulmer came up with a solution that killed two birds with one stone. After laying off non-administrative positions and printing thick stacks of timesheets, he announced the “Labour-for-Lecture” initiative: for each hour of labour performed, students accumulate an hour of lecture time.
Admittedly, things became a little messy when second-year students were allowed to teach first-year courses. Students started protesting against this “broken telephone approach” to their education, but the unprecedented wave of high grades quickly drowned the complaints.
Objections poured in from colleges and universities across the province, questioning if Capilano University’s credentials were worth the paper they were printed on. Addressing the concerns from these snitch institutions, which, in Mr. Fulmer’s words, are “obviously jealous,” resulted in an investigation from the province that showed that four out of five students were cheating.
In response to students’ claims that they are not receiving the learning support and adequate lectures needed to pass without cheating, Mr. Fulmer said, “Students who cheat are literally the problem and should be the last ones to propose a solution.” The chancellor, visibly annoyed by stating ‘the obvious,’ declared: “We need more enforcement.”
Each classroom was assigned four security guards—one for each corner—who became the only position that could not be filled by students. Having to pay actual wages was a hurdle that Mr. Fulmer backflipped over with his new “cheating fine” policy. Students who are caught looking at other students’ papers—at the guard’s sole discretion—are given a fine that reduces their accumulated lecture time by three hours. To provide some flexibility though, “They can choose to fulfill these hours at the A&W of their choice,” offered Mr. Fulmer.