God forbid NYU should be called to account for its neoimperial urbanist designs, its hypercasualized divisions of academic labor, its happy complicity with the neoconservative legislative, judicial, and politicsal attack on organizing, and its vicious threats against the people whose work makes it work. It is because we are responsible for the future of the academy that we organize, and if our membership authorizes it and the organizing committee deems it necessary, that we will strike.
I voted today.
Graduate School of Arts and Science
Mon, Oct 24, 2005 at 4:49 PM
OPEN LETTERTO THE COMMUNITY OF THE
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCE
From Catharine R. Stimpson, Dean
October 24, 2005
responsible…1…liable to be called to account (to a person or for a thing).
2 morally accountable for one’s actions; capable of rational conduct…1
This is not a letter I write happily.
I understand that the United Auto Workers (UAW) and an NYU affiliate,
theGraduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC), have scheduled a “strike vote”
for today, October 24, and tomorrow, October 25, and perhaps for even further
into the week. The UAW and GSOC want graduate assistants to vote to go on strike
in order to force the University to recognize the union and engage in collective
bargaining with it on behalf of graduate assistants. I may be misinformed.
I hope I am. Prudence, however, requires that I believe what I have been told
and read. Since Spring 2005, members of the NYU community have disagreed
about the issue of unionization of graduate assistants. The union has supporters
among faculty and students, some passionately so. Some say that the union
gives purpose totheir lives. Others say that the union offers them protection
and security. Still others want to offer solidarity to their fellow
students who may believein the union more strongly than they do. 2
I respect these voices, and others, but all of us who are
teachinghave an overarching responsibility to our students—no matter what our
position about the UAW and GSOC. Our obligation is to meet our classes. If we
were doctors, we would not walk out on a patient in an operating room. If
we were lawyers, we would not abandon a client in a court room. Graduate
assistants or faculty, we are teachers, morally accountable for being with our
students in their classrooms and laboratories. A vote for our accountability as
teachers must trump a strike vote and a strike. If we are irresponsible, we are
liableto be called to account. More work needs to
be done to strengthen graduate education at NYU—and elsewhere. Despite our
differences about unionization, I am profoundlycommitted to working with the
entire GSAS and University community to continue this job. In a few days, the
GSAS “Priorities Statement” for 2005-6 will be distributed to faculty, staff,
and students. It offers some ideas about our common future.
I would be happy to talk to anyone about this Letter.
Best wishes.
1 _The Concise Oxford Dictionary_, Ninth Edition (Oxford: Clarendon
Press,1999), p. 1173.
2 The University’s position is available at www.nyu.edu/provost/ga
andhttp://www.nyu.edu/public.affairs/gata/
Man and I thought the letters we got were fucking infantilizing.
ReplyDeleteI love this use of "we" as though any Dean has put in any substantial classroom time in the past 15 years.
Yeah, it's insulting. Last week, before the vote even began, we got lies and slander from the President. Today, as we start voting, we get the Dean questioning our capability for rational thought (why would they admit us if we're just a bunch of morons? Why would they rely heavily on us to teach their undergrads?) and issuing thinly veiled threats.
ReplyDeleteIf NYU doesn't want us to strike, there's a very simple way to resolve everything. It's called negotiating a second contract. They have these nifty things called no-strike clauses which employers just love.
Also, Evan, the membership meeting was held in a German classroom, and i was going to write "Streik" on the blackboard, but then i forgot.
Alas, that could have become an homage to the March 2003 strike, during which I carried a sign that said "German streikt" (assuming no one would get what Deutsch means) and the AP reporter walked up to me and asked, in all seriousness, so are you from the Italian department?
ReplyDeleteYeah, that was one of the signs the undergrads talked about a lot, along with the one on the back of Rachel B-D's dog and the Waiting For Godot-themed picket sign that one of the doctoral Dramaturges had.
ReplyDelete