Top Inuk scholar protests Nunavut scholarship system

ALISON BLACKDUCK

IQALUIT — Nunavut’s only Inuk PhD candidate is boycotting the NITC-sponsored Nunavut Beneficiaries Scholarship Program this year.

Thomas Hadlari, 26, says applying for the annual $2,400 scholarship isn’t worth the headache.

He informed the Nunavut Implementation Training Committee about his one-man boycott in a July 1 e-mail which states:

“After considerable frustration in previous years I shall be boycotting the NITC-sponsored Nunavut Beneficiaries Scholarship program this year. I protest that students are required to produce supporting documents at unreasonable deadlines, sometimes even before universities can issue them. Whether qualified or not for the scholarship Ms. Barbara Tartak has made it clear in past years that applications will be discouraged, subject to undue hindrance.”

In a recent telephone interview from his Cambridge Bay home, Hadlari laid most of the blame on Tartak and Mary Pameolik, both former NITC employees. Today Tartak works for Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. in Rankin Inlet, and Pameolik is the supervisor of the Financial Assistance for Nunavut Students program in Arviat.

“She was very difficult, really quite rude,” the soft-spoken Hadlari said of Pameolik. “I had a lot of run-ins. It was brutal.”

Hadlari says the thought of Pameolik supervising FANS disturbs him.

The biggest problem he encountered when applying for the scholarship in previous years was Tartak and Pameolik’s insistence that he meet unreasonable deadlines.

As a graduate student, Hadlari says his official transcripts and other university-related documentation, such as proof-of-registration, isn’t processed in time to meet NITC’s application deadlines.

“Most of the scholarship recipients go to Arctic College, so they’re not used to dealing with university students,” he said. “But last year was when things got really ridiculous.”

In 1999, Hadlari began his PhD in geology at Ottawa’s Carleton University, even though he hadn’t finished his master’s degree, which he began working on in 1998.

According to Hadlari, his academic advisors at Carleton recommended that he skip his master’s and start his PhD because his grades and thesis project indicated he was capable of studying at a more advanced level.

Hadlari accepted the challenge and began his doctoral dissertation: a study of the protozoic rift of the Baker Lake Basin.

Last year, his studies led him to the University of Calgary, where he was registered as a visiting student, while still registered at Carleton — a common occurrence in academia.

However, Hadlari says Tartak was ignorant of that fact and rejected his scholarship application because, he says, she assumed that he was trying to defraud the system, and his application was late.

What she didn’t understand, he says, is that his documentation for the fall session hadn’t been processed by the university. When it was, he says he forwarded it promptly to NITC.

“It was in her office and she said she didn’t have it,” he said.

However, Hadlari says he acquiesced and had Carleton’s administration send another proof-of-registration form to Tartak.

But when it arrived, he says, Tartak questioned the form’s authenticity despite the presence of Carleton’s official seal.

“The amount of time I spent working on this last fall almost wasn’t worth it,” Hadlari said. “I moved to Calgary, I was doing a killer course, and I was writing a paper for the Geological Survey of Canada — it was too much for me.

“It was incredibly painful because I needed the money, but getting everything in on time was physically impossible.”

Bill Logan of NITC says that application deadlines for students are flexible, but admitted that he didn’t know about Hadlari’s complaints, and he didn’t know that Hadlari sent NITC an E-mail last month.

Tartak refused to be interviewed by Nunatsiaq News.