Sixty Minutes of Luke

At the Town Hall Meeting last night, John Sexton stated unecquivocally that no matter how many graduate students on this campus express their support for a union, he will continue to stand in the way of a second contract for us. He likened himself to George Bush when Susan asked him if he was saying that those of us who objected to his imperious unilaterlaism should just leave, likening us to people wondering whether they should move to Canada after the 2004 election. He declined to offer any kind of timetable to people asking about summer funding, any kind of moral compass or professional standards for accepting donations when queried about the Shelby White fiasco. He turned to tautology to offer a farcical explanation for the cuts to health care, claiming that it was not that NYU had ceased to pay 100% of the premium, but rather that the benefits had diminished. He arrogantly accused Paul Kershaw of faulty historigraphy when Paul pointed out the absurdity of the claim that we are not workers, "lamented" the devaluation of the humanities which he has done a great deal to foment, admitted that the return to a 2-class/semester teaching load for creative writing students in the expository writing program was a very real possibility. As Steve put it,

“NYU used cutting teaching loads as a PR strategy last fall to attempt to gain sympathy in a community they were betraying,” said Steve Fletcher, a second-year graduate student in American Studies. “After Sexton announced that their generosity was a temporary PR stunt, I’m not sure why anyone would trust him again.”

Draped in his usual faux-proletarian Yankee cap and Brooklyn Prep sweatshirt. Sexton refused to draw any limit to the extent to which he was willing to destroy the university in order to try to break the union when asked. He also called me "Luke." Whether I'm Luke Campbell, Luke Skywalker (paraphrasing Obi-Wan, if you lock us out, we shall only grow more powerful,) Luke Wilson, or Luke from the OC, i am left to ponder. In his response to me, he spoke conspiratorially of "other people" who were bereft of the capacity for reason and measured judgement in their condemnation of his union-busting. Five minutes later he categorically denied having engaged in acts of villification against GSOC. We who constitute the collective virus, as Sexton has called us, had a hard time taking this at face value.

Unlike the previous Sexton Town Hall back in September, which I left feeling angry but ineffective, I, like many others, found this confrontation productive and energizing. Not only did we obtain some pretty disgusting answers from the president of the university, we also articulated to each other and to him why we are/need the union, why we remain on strike after five months, committed to winning a just contract and contesting the casualization and neoliberalization of the academy with a collective and constituent democratic vision of a better university, new forms aqnd structures of teaching and learning, forging new and dynamic relationships between the work we do and the spaces we inhabit and interact with.

I finally got to make the comment I was going to make back in September, rejecting the trope of the union as intermediary and the constant assertions that the conversation was over, and that the administration was "past" the union in favor of a reminder that, as the chant goes, we are the union, and are very much here in the present, and are fully committed to fighting for our future and that of the university we want to work in. Others spoke powerfully - A sociologist called on Sexton to lead other universities in a struggle against casualization rather than tow the line set by Levin, Bollinger, and Rodin/Gutman. Paul, as I noted above, shut the door on the stupid debate about whether or not we are workers, which really ended a long time ago and only gets ressucitated by university administrators and those who have something to gain by furthering casualization. "Third Year American Studies student," who refused to name himself to Sexton and whom I will not name here in favor of his designation in the WSN article, pointed to the imperial erasures of any meaningful kind of collective voice for graduate workers in the university's actions, while Tricia made clear what being a union has meant for graduate teachers at NYU and why we will continue to fight to remain so, not, as Sexton would have it, because we're reactionaries who want to return to a past which has slipped by us, but because we want a university in which all workers are respected, all teachers have a voice in our work, which is ruled not by fiat and corporate robber-barons who slash teachers' health care even as they raise tuition astronomically, but guided, transparently and democratically, by the people who teach and research here, towards something which arises from, interacts with in honest and egalitarian dialogue, and works to support and foster spaces of community rather than colonizing them, leveling them, and replacing them with profitable yuppie real estate developments inhabitable only by those students who/whose families can afford the ever-increasing cost of a university where the president makes $897,000 a year.

“We want a university that does not rely on casualized, vulnerable labor, and we are going to remain on strike until the administration comes to the bargaining table,” said Maggie Clinton, a sixth-year graduate student in history.

“John Sexton keeps saying that the only people disagreeing with him are the five or so renegade members of GSOC,” said Amy LeClair, a third-year graduate student in sociology. “I think what he’ll see tonight is that a majority of graduate students — both on strike and not — still support the union.”