Two weeks ago, all we heard about was the “reasonableness” of asking for a 21 percent pay increase after the worst budgetary year in thirty years, a year with 0 percent pay raises in other state universities. Suddenly the issues have become faculty lines and the protection of tenure. These are more important issues, but it is too little too late. Public perception has been fixed now that this is about self-serving raises during bad economic times. If real issues of collective good had been at the top and raises far down on the list in the public statements by the faculty association leaders, my support would not have been so compromised. My support of a strike reinforces a negative image of the faculty, whatever genuine issues may be at risk. I resent that.

I am told there is a plot to weaken or destroy tenure. But the administration’s current position is identical to the one that has been in place since 1984 and does not represent a new position. If better language needs to be worked out, negotiate. By dragging these issues into the political arena, the possibility for rational bargaining has been seriously compromised. One reason negotiations have been closed is precisely to avoid carrying the debate over into the political posturing we are now seeing. It is unproductive and damages the academic community as well as the “recruitment and retention” of students. Thus I am being asked to support a strike that will further damage the real economic as well as social basis of my institution.

My loyalties are first to my discipline, my profession as a teacher and to my students. Then comes loyalty to my department, my colleagues and the institution that supports them. Included here is the duty to work for the highest ideals they can embody. Far down on the list are my loyalties to the Faculty Association.

Advertisement

I was an active and involved supporter at its inception, but withdrew to its margins in light of its failure to act professionally and humanely. I hoped voices of moderation and reason would come to prevail, but they have not. I hoped new leadership in the administration would strive to heal the wounds of the past and generate an atmosphere for constructive dialogue based on shared ideals of what academia stands for. Instead we have had a series of stumbling and inarticulate gestures that have alienated faculty further and degraded morale.

But the association has pushed me into the corner. If it wants my support and loyalty, it must do far, far better to express a clear vision of ideals worth fighting for. It must learn to act with reason and humanity and have the genuine welfare of students at heart, rather than using them as hostages. A strike will harm my students, my department and my University without accomplishing any positive academic goal. I cannot support a vote to strike. If it passes, I will leave the faculty association and hope that either new leadership will emerge or some other professional union, one more in line with academic values, will come to replace it.