Yesterday afternoon, the Board of Governors of the University of Lethbridge indicated that they will allow some Members to access physical and electronic research spaces to attend to time-sensitive research. As the Board’s legal counsel put it, “any requests will have to identify the harm caused and why it is significant for the Faculty Member to access the facility and how the University’s interests are engaged.” Our current understanding is that the Board will only allow access to research projects that would see harm if Members were unable to attend to them. We believe the Board will not consider delays in research productivity to constitute such harm.
For example, having a publication slowed down due to lack of access to physical or electronic resources is unlikely to constitute such harm. Having ongoing research projects involving live subjects or irreplaceable perishable materials that would see material damage or alteration from a delay and this delay would cause irreparable loss of scientific materials or the scientific quality of the study results or data, would constitute such harm.
We realize that the “University’s interests” are not clearly defined at this point. We are seeking further clarification from the Board about what this means.
Contact Karl Laderoute at officer@ulfa.ca with requests to access physical or electronic information. Please ensure ULFA has an alternate (non-Uleth) email address for you as we believe your access to institutional email accounts will be cut off at some point today.