Keith U. Lies

in his insulting, anti-GESO invective in the Yale Daily News today, KU writes "or that over the summer the National Labor Relations Board unequivocally struck down any right for students to organize as employees ..."

Keith, i don't know what parallel universe you live in, but in this one, a 3-2 ruling on bitterly partisan lines (ever read the opinions of the dissenting judges? Yeah, i didn't think so,) is hardly "unequivocal." Calling GESO's history "unremarkable is vicious slander of another sort, but i won't get into that - and Urbahn's carping about the 2003 election fails to account for the year and a half of research over the turnout and the university's anti-union campaign by simply and slanderously referring to the entire process as "rigged." Maybe he would have been better at paying attention if he weren't so busy celebrating hate crimes.

For an organization that claims to represent graduate students, it seems that in reality, GESO represents an underwhelming few. GESO has become increasingly involved with locals 34 and 35 on issues that are at best tangentially related to graduate student organization. This involvement -- the result of some students' leftist political leanings and GESO's implicit grouping of students with blue-collar workers as dual victims of the big, bad Yale Corporation and the miserly Dick Levin -- has alienated many in the graduate community who believe the organization should remain apolitical.

But then again, maybe GESO's political posturing has paid off. Duped by that word "union" and the "Norma Rae" fantasies of some Yale graduate students -- or more likely, attracted to the opportunity of political allies in the fight against the Yale administration -- members of the real unions locals 34 and 35 attended the December meeting, dutifully holding up signs and chanting in support of the new "union" of graduate students.

Okay, first the alliance with the federation compromises GESO's integrity as a union. Then 34 and 35 are the "real unions" and GESO is Sally Field. (Can I be Ron Leibman?) Get yourself together, buddy, you aren't making any sense. And "new"? GESO is fifteen years old. That's longer than George Bush has been sober! Try telling any rank and file leader in 34 or 35 than GESO isn't a "real union." On second thought, you probably don't need to do that, because you go to Yale, and you know everything.