This week, the Editorial of the Stoney Creek News**makes mention of how little McMaster University does for the City of Hamilton as a whole:
Hamilton’s two other important institutions must also contribute more to rebuilding the confidence and trust of the community – the Hamilton school boards and McMaster University.
Since amalgamation, the public school board has been as out of sync and separated from the rest of the community as Mars is to earth. Vital decisions concerning schools, property and just working with other community groups have been willfully ignored.
McMaster University, which is now Hamilton’s largest employer, has also been largely absent when it comes to working for the community’s best interest.
McMaster is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, which refuses to get involved to assist the community. Only when it is pushed, shoved and embarrassed – such as with its relationship with the Westdale neighbourhood – does it decide to take action.
As for a productive, cooperative partnership between City Hall and McMaster, that has remained elusive – a troubling dilemma involving the city’s most important entities.
McMaster University Administration has a very elitist attitude and looks down very much about the working class roots of the City of Hamilton. I see it myself. I went to a good high school in Hamilton but McMaster recruiters showed up rarely. They only showed up once a year at the inner-city schools of Churchill and Delta. I know from people that attend McMaster with me that McMasters does a lot more recruiting in the 905 belt. It is a clear showing of where McMaster prefers its students to come from. McMaster has absolutely no inner-city outreach program unlike many other universities and has no plans to start one. McMaster is the closest university to Canada’s largest native reserve, the Six Nations, yet does little outreach as an institution outside of the good work of the Indigeous Studies Program.
The Stoney Creek News is right to call out McMaster this week.
Source: Stoney Creek News