Photo by Forrester Toews/The Griff

SAMU has been in talks with MacEwan to reestablish the Ombuds office, yet the discussions have stagnated.

SAMU and MacEwan have discussed bringing the ombuds office back to the university. However, what happened during the discussions remains a mystery, even though it has been almost a year since they were publicly mentioned.

Considered an impartial third party, the ombuds office serves an important role within the higher education ecosystem by providing confidential support and guidance to students facing both academic and non-academic issues.

There has been scant reporting on the closure of MacEwan’s ombuds office, but what is readily available comes from the Ombuds Blog, run by Tom Kosakowski, a university ombudsperson based in Los Angeles. According to Kosakowski, MacEwan closed its ombuds office on April 30, 2020, due to significant budget cuts and financial strains stemming from a budget crisis preceding the pandemic. This resulted in several position eliminations, including the student ombudsperson role.

Although MacEwan students were without its service, SAMU stepped in to fill the gap years later.

In 2022, the SAMU Student Advocacy Centre (SSAC) was established. Similar to the ombuds office, the SSAC’s responsibilities included providing students with support with policy issues. Unlike MacEwan’s ombudsperson, however, the SSAC falls under a student-led model.

SAMU executive committee members have mentioned advocacy work to reinstate the ombuds office since at least 2024, with the goal to “lay the framework for advocacy regarding the reinstatement of the student ombudsperson at MacEwan University.” 

“We have put forward a request to MacEwan to assess the feasibility of an Ombuds office, and given that this idea is still in its initial stages with regards to advocacy on this issue, I am not able to provide an interview on the topic at this time.”

—Nathan Poon, SAMU president.

The initiative reappears in the Jan. 15, 2025 agenda, emphasizing the need for a neutral, independent ombudsperson and outlining an objective to lay the framework for advocacy. Its status remained “initial stages.”

The proposal is reiterated without change at least three times throughout the students’ council agendas in 2025, consistently citing funding cuts, and maintaining an “initial stages” status with no reported advancement.

But when asked why MacEwan dissolved the ombudsperson in 2019, a MacEwan spokesperson stated that it was due to “broad restructuring.”

Though the spokesperson mentioned that the office was replaced by a number of other student support services, such as the support coordinators in Student Affairs, the SSAC, and the Confidence Line, they also stated that “MacEwan is willing to engage with SAMU to understand the issue(s) they wish to resolve by re-instating this role.” 

What they believed these “issues” were was not disclosed.

While it appears as though SAMU executives periodically discuss the reinstatement of the ombuds office, as the proposal is frequently reflected in SAMU’s executive committee workplans, what has been discussed remains a mystery.

“We have put forward a request to MacEwan to assess the feasibility of an Ombuds office, and given that this idea is still in its initial stages with regards to advocacy on this issue, I am not able to provide an interview on the topic at this time,” SAMU president Nathan Poon wrote in an email to the Griff.

The Griff then asked Poon to explain the initial stages further, given that there hasn’t been any movement throughout his term.

“We won’t be able to provide further information at this time,” wrote Poon. “While SAMU values transparency in our work, we have to balance this against the need for confidentiality in our advocacy work with the university. At this stage of the project, we don’t have publicly available details to share.”

As of now, the mystery surrounding the ombuds office continues, but perhaps it will be reestablished someday.