Dear Students:

Now is the time for you to get mad, mad as hell.

SIU administration and the Faculty Association have failed you.

You came here hoping to be granted the opportunity to get an education and now that will be ruined for you because the “grown ups” can’t remember that you are the reason that the rest of us are here.

The idea of working together for the good of all has been forgotten and now we are challenged to “take sides.”

Well, you should take your own side. Neither the FA nor the Administration thinks of you as anything other than pawns — yes, pawns. Or, rather, if the administration thinks of you as pawns, the FA thinks of you as hostages. And you are going to be treated as hostages; make no mistake about that.

In all its informational broadcasts, the FA has not expressed one moment of concern about the students. That’s typical for its past behavior and it is a major reason why I left the FA. The administration has conducted, perhaps, the worst effort I have seen in putting forward its “concerns” and it has asked you to believe the ludicrous story that your education will not suffer because it will hire “substitutes.” But I do think the administration understands the idea that without students this place closes down. So there’s a difference: the FA wants to close us down and the administration wants to believe they can’t.

No matter, both administration and the FA have failed you and you should be mad, very, very mad, about that. I am a teacher, and with my dedication to my ancient discipline, my responsibilities are to do well by you: my students.

For that reason, I will be in my classroom teaching — teaching as colleagues in my profession of philosophy have for more than 2,500 years. I will not take you hostage and violate the loyalty of my profession. But let me share my own anger at where we have come.

Thomas Alexander

director of graduate studies and professor of philosophy