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Post Info TOPIC: NY Times & Media Attention
Advocate

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NY Times & Media Attention
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If graduate students at Columbia can get this kind of media attention, why isn't someone from big media looking into the situation at USM?


This is copied from the New York Times website.


Graduate Students Walk Out at Columbia

April 20, 2004
By KAREN W. ARENSON


With two weeks of classes left in the semester, many
Columbia University graduate teaching assistants boycotted
classes yesterday and picketed noisily at the university's
main gate to try to pressure Columbia into recognizing
their right to unionize.

Some classes were canceled, although neither the university
nor the protest organizers could say how many. Some
demonstrators said they would not return to class until
Columbia acknowledged their right to unionize, while others
said they might skip just one class.

The disruption on campus seemed limited. Many students
sprawled in the bright sunshine on the steps to Low
Library, reading or chatting, largely oblivious to the
protest.

Some undergraduates, like Veronica M. Padula, a sophomore
majoring in ecology, evolution and environmental biology,
expressed sympathy for the graduate assistants, saying they
worked hard and were helpful. But many students said the
strike was little more than a minor annoyance because
Columbia had assured them that they would get grades and,
if they were seniors, would graduate.

"It's fine," said Raymond Sultan, a senior whose Italian
class was canceled. "We're all getting more sleep. I don't
think people are that sad. It's the end of the year. It's
nice out. And we'll teach ourselves."

Maida Rosenstein, president of Local 2110 of the United
Automobile Workers, which represents Columbia's clerical
workers and is working with its graduate assistants, said
that about 400 people had participated in the morning
protest.

The graduate students voted on unionizing two years ago,
but the votes were never counted because Columbia appealed
the students' right to unionize to the National Labor
Relations Board. The board said last week that it was
studying the case, along with similar appeals, including
one by the State University of New York.

Some protesters said that they were happy in their teaching
and research jobs, and that the threat of unionization had
been instrumental in Columbia's decision to raise its basic
stipend to $17,000.

"When I came in, things weren't bad," said Stephen Twilley,
a second-year graduate student in Italian. "But I realized
that the stipend had been raised because of efforts to
organize, so I have a debt to past organizers. This is our
last best hope to move the university."

Alan Brinkley, Columbia's provost, said the biggest
pressure to improve graduate student compensation was
competition with other top universities.

Not all graduate students support unionization. Jason
Governale, a fourth-year graduate student in history, said
a union was unnecessary.

"Ideologically, I am not opposed to the creation of a
union, especially when working conditions are poor or
hazardous," he said. "But quite frankly, being a teaching
assistant at Columbia falls into neither of these
categories."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/20/nyregion/20strike.html?ex=1083492850&ei=1&
en=5408f64b85f354cc



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Flash Gordon

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Because we are not in New York, not at a famous university, and nobody is striking would pretty much be the answer.

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Fire Shelby


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Posts: 1140
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quote:
Originally posted by: Flash Gordon
"Because we are not in New York, not at a famous university, and nobody is striking would pretty much be the answer."
And Mississippi is notoriously unsympathetic to any kind of labor organizing.  Right to work laws and all...

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educator

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quote:
Originally posted by: Flash Gordon
"Because we are not in New York, not at a famous university, and nobody is striking would pretty much be the answer."
Flash - good observation.  we might not be in New York but by golly, before this is over they'll be plenty to strke over.

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friend

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quote:




Originally posted by: Advocate
"If graduate students at Columbia can get this kind of media attention, why isn't someone from big media looking into the situation at USM?


____________


Just an observation:


We all agree that the administration is shirking its responsibilities to operate within normal parameters of academic administrations. And the lack of outrage (beyond USM and even outside of Mississippi, I mean) is troubling.


If the faculty were forced to respond to the administration's unwillingness to adminster university business in a fair and reasonable way by, say, refusing to conduct their academic responsibilities in a similarly disdainful way, national attention would result.  I am not advocating, say, withholding grades so that every student and parent wants answers. I am not advocating, say, blue sicknesses or the like to make final exams impossible to administer.  Those would be unfair to too many folks who don't deserve to suffer any more than they already have by belonging to an institution that hires unqualified people and fires its tenured professors for asking questions.


Yale and Columbia grad. students had little or nothing (at least not their life's work, as do most professors) to lose by not turning in grades, but their willingness to shut the system down brought some attention.



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Sarge

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quote:
Originally posted by: Flash Gordon
"Because we are not in New York, not at a famous university, and nobody is striking would pretty much be the answer."


Has the faculty discussed going on strike? People have picketed for much more trivial infractions than those Thames has committed.

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present professor

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quote:
Originally posted by: Sarge
" Has the faculty discussed going on strike? People have picketed for much more trivial infractions than those Thames has committed."

I think it probably isn't something that would happen here unless there had been some major labor organizing OR if Shelby actually contracted a vengence murder . . .


The truth is that faculty here really have complex feelings about whether it is right to deprive students of classtime. Personally, I'd go for the larger issue (but then my last post was in a unionized faculty). But I can understand. Lots of folks here see themselves like dostors, nurses, police . . .  to withhold something beneficial that is in their power to give just seems wrong to many.


That's unfortunate because the administration plays on that vulnerability.


The biggest problem we have is that there is no direct line to the Board. Faculty is cut off from direct communication. This needs to be remediated. I'd suggest that the Faculty Senate Presidents elect a slate of officers who attend Board meetings just like the Presidents. They could be there to answer questions . . . give information, or raise questions. But they are there to make sure that faculty interests are included and make sure the Presidents represent their institutions more objectively.



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Fire Shelby


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Posts: 1140
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quote:
Originally posted by: Sarge
" Has the faculty discussed going on strike? People have picketed for much more trivial infractions than those Thames has committed."

Again, Mississippi has "right to work" laws. 


Even more importantly, a faculty strike would go over like a lead balloon in Mississippi's court of public opinion--and it would play right into Shelby's spin that the AAUP is an aggitating union and that professors need to "work for a living."



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present professor

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quote:
Originally posted by:
" Again, Mississippi has "right to work" laws.  Even more importantly, a faculty strike would go over like a lead balloon in Mississippi's court of public opinion--and it would play right into Shelby's spin that the AAUP is an aggitating union and that professors need to "work for a living.""
Absolutely right FS. We can do symbolic acts but we really can't risk anything that would be be obstructionist . . . the most pwerful symbolic acts were have are those which remind Mississippi parents that it is the faculty who advise, listen, debate with, and go through the four or five year sojourn with their kids.

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Outside Observer

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Also, unless the state of MS has passed specific legislation guaranteeing public faculty the right to unionize, federal law does not include them as "employees."  So they might, "unionize" but employers would have no legal responsibility to bargain with their representatives.


quote:

Originally posted by:
" Again, Mississippi has "right to work" laws.  Even more importantly, a faculty strike would go over like a lead balloon in Mississippi's court of public opinion--and it would play right into Shelby's spin that the AAUP is an aggitating union and that professors need to "work for a living.""



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Crystalball

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But, once again, let's be reminded that with all the discussion about running the university like a business if it were a business the employees would have unionized and gone on strike by now.  Bad management is a union's best friend!

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Advocate

Date:
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I never intended to suggest that the professors go on strike.  I was only suggesting that there might be some way to bring in media besides HA and CL. 


 



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