March 14, 2025

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Burnaby, BC.

Coming off the heels of the University’s decision in 2024 to end SFU Woodward’s cultural programs, on January 23rd 2025, the University announced that it was closing its Vancity Office of Community Engagement (VOCE) and SFU Office of Community Engagement (Surrey). Continued budget challenges was cited as the main reason coupled with the University’s quest to ensure financial sustainability. This reason served as the impetus to a move towards a consolidated organisational model for Community Engagement & Dialogue. As a result, several positions were terminated and essential programs supporting our most vulnerable students now hang in limbo.

The unilateral decision to close these offices without adequate consultation with partners, agencies and other stakeholders is deeply troubling. This is a disservice to all the people and resources put into the process of connecting the university to the larger society. It goes against SFU’s values of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives which aim to create a “diverse, equitable and inclusive community where all feel welcome, safe, accepted and appreciated.” Most alarmingly, the closure of the Food Pantry directly contradicts SFU’s commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.”

For the University to thrive and make a lasting impact in our community, the SFSS believes that community engagement plays a crucial role. It allows the university to engage with all parties involved to identify risks, concerns, opportunities and potential outcomes that surround an issue thereby resulting in a more informed decision with mutual benefits. The SFSS is quite concerned about the lack of transparency and inclusion of both the decision and transitional plan. 

Currently, many initiatives and programs under the auspices of these offices face uncertainty. Programs such as the SFU Food Pantry which provides students facing financial precarity as a results of rising food costs with emergency groceries; the SFU Student Community Engagement competition which awards up to $30,000 in funds for SFU students who submit innovative ideas for working with community partners on projects that have meaningful impact; and the SFU’s Community Engagement Initiative (CEI) which offers small grants of up to $10,000 to SFU staff and faculty for projects developed with community partners that strengthen relationships, deepen knowledge, and have meaningful impact on issues that matter all face unpredictability. 

Students particularly those in the School of Contemporary Arts will miss out on supplementing their degree studies with the additional opportunities provided through all the artistic talks and academic  presentations sponsored by Vancity Office of Community Engagement (VOCE). They will also be deprived of internship opportunities that have previously been facilitated by VOCE, including most recently an artistic collaboration with the PuSh Festival. Furthermore, VOCE has historically employed and/or contracted many of SFU School of Contemporary Arts’ alumni, providing students with valuable experience in acquiring professional expertise in community-engaged arts. Currently, three of those alumni have lost their jobs with VOCE’s closure, which is devastating and sends a very negative message to undergraduate and graduate students who have come to the SCA to study because of our close relationship with VOCE. These cuts and office closures are taking place in the name of the university being fiscally responsible. However, it should be noted that these offices had a budget surplus and majority of its funds came from external sources. 

The closure of the SFU Food Pantry represents nothing short of a crisis for our most vulnerable students. We urge the University to honor its commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals by prioritizing student food security as a non-negotiable essential service, and to carefully review the compelling testimonies from those whose academic journeys and well-being have been positively impacted through the work of these offices. At a time where community building should remain paramount, decisions such as these call into question SFU’s mission of “bringing together the community through meaningful connections and working together to improve student experience.” As such, the SFSS calls on SFU to review its decision to close down these offices and lay off its staff.