Vancouver Island University president resigns under pressure from students and faculty

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 28, 2025 7:44 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 minutes ago

The president of Vancouver Island University successful Nanaimo is stepping down aft weeks of students and module demanding her resignation.

Deborah Saucier's departure was announced Thursday afternoon, effectual April 4.

She has been successful the presumption for six years.

In a statement, the assemblage credited her with "several important organization milestones, including the implementation of VIU's archetypal Strategic Plan and guiding the instauration done the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic" and commended her for "continued maturation and innovation."

But down the scenes, some students and module had go progressively captious of her decision-making.

LISTEN | VIU students' national acceptable to determination guardant aft assemblage president resigns: 

On March 6, the VIU Faculty Association said 86 per cent of its members had voted non-confidence successful Saucier, and connected March 5, the students' national issued an unfastened missive calling for her resignation.

In its statement, the students' national accused Saucier of fiscal mismanagement, draining cuts to pupil services and a deficiency of transparency and accountability.

Among the decisions cited by Saucier's critics were the implicit elimination of the school's euphony program, the cancellation of a caller child-care centre connected field and reductions to hours astatine the field library.

A assemblage spokesperson said Saucier would not beryllium disposable to respond to the concerns.

Leah Vaisanen, the Indigenous pupil typical for the VIU Students' Union, said the concerns surrounding Saucier and the university's enforcement squad had been piling up until it seemed similar determination was nary mode to determination forward.

"It wasn't conscionable 1 issue; it was a signifier of top-down decisions and a deficiency of accountability," she told CBC's On the Island impermanent host, Kathryn Marlow.

"There was a wide disconnect betwixt enactment and the VIU community."

A mixed legacy

When she archetypal arrived astatine the university, Saucier was touted arsenic the university's archetypal pistillate president and archetypal president to place arsenic Métis.

An accomplished neuroscientist, she came to the schoolhouse aft a two-year word arsenic president of Edmonton's MacEwan University and, anterior to that, was provost and vice-president, academic, astatine the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) successful Oshawa, Ont.

Gara Pruesse, the president of the VIU Faculty Association, said she had been a "good ambassador" for the schoolhouse and she had contributed to a "positive legacy," but she didn't spot a mode guardant for her anymore.

She said everyone who voted for Vaisanen's resignation had their ain reasons, but a communal taxable was "decisions being made that are not supported by evidence."

"That has been going connected for 3 years, and that's been contributing to wherefore we nary longer judge the president has been making decisions that align with our mission," she said.

She said a large contented among module was layoffs that person been ramped up since the simplification successful the fig of planetary students coming to the state owed to authorities from the B.C. and national governments.

She said that portion enrolment numbers are down, the numbers provided by the administration to warrant cuts did not lucifer what her members were seeing.

Vaisanen also cited concerns astir increases successful information spending pursuing pro-Palestine demonstrations connected the assemblage campus, which came astatine the aforesaid clip different programs were being cut.

She said she hoped the resignation would beryllium a "turning point" successful relations betwixt the assemblage and its subordinate groups, with an accidental to reset and determination things forward.

The assemblage said it is appointing VIU's chief fiscal serviceman , Emily Huner, as acting president and that the hunt is underway for a imperishable successor.