Just in case everyone hasn’t noticed, I would like to comment about how the recent faculty union/administration standoff has created an atmosphere at SIU that is dour and depressing.

To an average joe faculty type who has paid her union dues out of guilt and hope and is now watching from the sidelines, here is how it looks:In the Daily Egyptian I read about how both the administration and the union comport themselves like children in a sandbox; at union meetings I listen to various forms of bizarre cheerleading coming from academics who seem to have taken a Berlitz course in Teamster-speak; and in the hallways I hear just about everyone with any chance of landing a job elsewhere (namely the competent scholars who have worked very hard on behalf of both their students and the University) talking about getting out. Well, that would be a novel form of cost-cutting:a University run by ghosts.

At the risk of sounding like Rodney King, Can’t we all just get along? Is the administration really serious that they will brook no form of compromise and will not participate in the process of mediation, even when the numbers show SIU has salaries that are disproportionately low and administrative costs that are too high? Is it too late for the people who run the school to sit down and talk civilly with the people who run the classes (the former having been the latter until a few years ago)? Do I have to start running away when I encounter members of the administration shopping at Kroger?

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What I always liked about teaching at SIU is it was a congenial place where most of my colleagues were united by a refusal to condescend to petty political squabbles that would divert our energies from our real work. But these days, it’s getting pretty hard to keep the love vibe going.