According to Angeles's background notes, presented with his motion, various laboratories in the McConnell Engineering Building were robbed of expensive equipment, including some Silicon Graphics workstations.

Although the University reimbursed the value of the stolen equipment "in a timely fashion," Angeles stated that "these thefts have left a sense of insecurity within the personnel." Moreover, he charged, "the resources allocated to the security infrastructure have been well below what is needed for security to be effective, a deficiency that has been aggravated because of the construction work currently underway" in the engineering buildings.

Student representative Melissa Pallett agreed, but said the motion didn't go far enough.

"Security at McGill is inadequate," she said. Furthermore, it wasn't simply a question of stolen goods, but personal security was at risk too. "What if a student in the Engineering building had run into the thieves as they were leaving the lab?"

"No reasonable person could be against this motion," said Vice-Principal (Administration and Finance) Phyllis Heaphy, adding that finding the means to pay for the additional security is another matter. "In a closed budget environment, the money would have to come from other activities. More budget cuts are coming. I don't know what to do."

"In the Engineering Building alone, we had $100,000 in lost equipment," stated Dean of Engineering John Dealy. "I'd prefer to have spent this on security."

Associate Vice-Principal (Academic) Nick de Takacsy suggested that we should post news of these thefts to make people more aware of the problem and more vigilant.

Professor Robin Yates asked if there was a database of equipment and serial numbers "that we can use to track computers, etc."

Heaphy stated that the database idea had been recommended by "our auditor and Quebec's auditor, but that it would cost $300,000 to produce. Moreover, due to McGill's decentralized administration, it would be very difficult to implement."

"What is the total cost of thefts over the last year?" asked Professor Wilbur Jonsson.

"Somewhere around $100,000," answered Heaphy.

"That would make it roughly equivalent to the salaries of two or three additional security guards, wouldn't it?" asked Jonsson.

"Yes," said Heaphy.

Senate approved the motion.

De Takacsy presented a summary of the Commission des universités sur les programmes (CUP) reports that have been released to date, and their implications for McGill.

CUP was established by CREPUQ about 18 months ago with the mandate to examine the relevance and "complementarity" of university programs offered in Quebec.

De Takacsy said that the idea was to recommend a greater sharing of programs while maintaining a high level of quality. He added that the CUP reviews "didn't turn out and were never intended to be a hatchet job."

He said one goal was to explain to the outside world that "we have done rationalization ourselves, in a rational way." CUP then began its review of "areas where the belief was that we needed rationalization. It turned out that this was not the case." In fact, the conclusion reached by CUP was that Quebec university programs needed far greater inter-university collaboration, not department cutting.

De Takacsy added that no action was required by Senate at this time, "but there may be a need later." He noted that APPC had adopted three recommendations based on the reports. The main issues that faced McGill within the context of greater collaboration with other universities were how to contend with the academic and financial complications such partnerships would entail.

For instance, we need to give thought to how to properly credit the contributions of individual McGill professors working within such collaborative programs. Furthermore, we need some mechanisms to facilitate the sharing of courses and the exchange of students between McGill and the other Quebec universities.

Principal Shapiro noted that CUP "will finish its preliminary work this year." He said that CREPUQ would undertake a public awareness campaign to highlight the work that had been done.