Officially the weirdest link to this blog ever.

Dream School, Deferred.

The Washington Square News finally picks up a story the Chronicle's blog reported last Thursday, that NYU, after five straight years of inspiring the young with dreams of gentrification, Must-See-TV sitcom-y verisimilitude, and endless shopping opportunities, is no longer the nation's number one dream school, replaced by Harvard.

The reason? While NYU's bumped tuition over 5% every year for the last seven, and in its "restructuring" plan promises to do so even more in the future (in addition to job 'attrition' and a massive speed up and an increased centralization of power in the hands of the ULT,) Harvard just announced massive financial aid reform targeted at middle class households - problematic in that it's more of an admissions lure and financial risk game than aid to/for those who really need it, but anything that ends student debt peonage has its merits, and NYU, where undergrad financial aid is almost non-existent, should pay attention.

Also, there's an interesting piece in IHE today about how unions are thinking about and organizing around the issues of full-time adjuncts and another piece, particularly important given NYU's recent pronouncements, on increasing and excessive workloads for university clerical and technical employees...

random ten for 3/30

The Cake - "Baby That's Me". Not to be confused with the 90's alternative rock band. This is late '60s female-fronted soul drenched in instrumentation, Phil Spector style. I found it on a blog somewhere.

The Coup - "Santa Rita Weekend."

look around theres hell of motherfuckas that i recognize
oh whats up man im back again
but its a temporary situation
taking weekend vacation
government incaceration
i call myself working on a pay hike
they calling me working on my third strike
sike i cant go forward
and motherfuckas cant ignore it
cos all my peoples on parole
in the pen gotta warrant
so its some shit i done leaped in
damn another santa rita weekend

Bad Religion - The Quickening. I have this album?

Skull Snaps - "Ain't That Loving You"

Os Mutantes - "Ave Lucifer."

El-P. "Accidents Don't Happen. Pretty sharp critique of post 9/11 NYC

now they check their bags with a staff claspin' Uzis
who deserves the wrath without warning
the same sky for the martyr with a spork scorch New York forfeits
run among the poppy fields order some more clips
store trips are weird but the fear is forceless
Bloomey bought the city of Lego and shitty metal hull
jitters to the floor boards burnt almost aborted
flight of the accidental tourist, morbid
the advertising gods so oddly courtship
godly corporate squads plot these tortures
holiness is hard and it's costing god fortunes
(guess he took a second job on the force to afford it)
I don't want a part of these self fulfilled prophecies

Deerhoof - "You Can See."

Lord Rhaburn - "More Love Reggae." From the Numero Group Belize City Boil Up compilation. Good stuff.

Sister Love - "Blackbird." 70's NYC funk/soul Beatles cover. Not bad, either.

God, Gays and Guns. - "Sally." This is Thomas Frampton's "disco-punk" song about how we need to stop organizing and just revolt already (a gross oversimplification, i admit.) I'm not sure who "Sally" is here, but I definitely had this argument with Thomas on numerous occasions in a variety of iterations. In other words, I'm so vain I probably think this song is about me. That said, it's pretty good, and chock full of handy situationist references and a catchy chorus which smacks of Ralph Chaplin in a good way. I like Thomas a lot.

Ask him about the coal

Apparently Richard C. Levin is going to testify before the Senate next week about global warming and climate change. The Yale Daily News article announcing this claims that sustainability has been a cornerstone of Levin's 15 year presidency of Yale and offers up a conference on climate change to take place at Yale next month featuring the governor of California, who previously came out in favor of global cooling as Mr. Freeze in the crapulescent Batman and Robin, as proof. Yale's office of public affairs is also touting this conference on sustainability at Yale next week, which seems like it was organized mostly by the Yale Sustainable Food Project and the recycyling office.

The Yale adminisrtration's efforts to claim and support sustainable projects (the food stuff, recycling) etc., may well be a good thing in the long run. Certainly, if you're an administrative technocrat it's better to be green than not. I suppose it's better to be a Richard Levin and talk about the importance of environmental sustainability, even if in deeply problematic and neoliberal ways, than to be a Larry Summers and "joke" about selling toxic waste to third world countries as a development strategy. But I would argue that labeling Yale as green or otherwise needs to involve a more careful analysis of how Yale functions not just on campus, but across its global reach.

Specifically, I'm thinking about Farallon, the hedge fund that's been so involved in the university endowment's unparalelled growth over the past decade. No small amount of the activism directed at the hedge fund by students, workers, and other activists between 2002 and the present (have) had to do with the ways university funds were/are being used to mismanage the environment - the forests Yale owned in Maine, those pesky water rights at the Baca ranch in southern Colorado, and that coal plant in Indonesia. None of those smack of sustainability. I commend activists who are fighting to make universities more sustainable and environmentally beneficial institutions, and think it's not a bad thing when universities support those efforts, but I also hope that someone on that senate panel asks Levin about the compromised nature of his claims to exemplarity.

Talk about burying what should be the lede...

Paragraph 13:

The registrar sent its bills to the deans of Florida State’s various colleges and made them pay up; some deans have historically paid the tab out of the colleges’ budgets, while others have passed the costs on to departments or even to the faculty members themselves, which can take a particularly heavy toll on less-well-paid teaching assistants and beginning instructors.

GEO and the University of Michigan have reached a contract.

details here.

Dear GEO members and supporters,

Due to our successful walkout today, which shut down activity across campus, the Administration asked to reenter bargaining this afternoon in the interest of avoiding a second day. Following a marathon session of negotiating, at 11:42pm Tuesday night we reached a tentative agreement on a new contract.

Because of this progress, the GEO Bargaining Team, empowered by stewards, activists, strike captains, and picketers has CALLED OFF the second day of the walkout Wednesday.

This is a HISTORIC contract that shows the power of organized labor. The administration has never been willing to bargain with us during a walkout before. They were also willing to engage us on particular issues on which they were previously unwilling to talk. We made huge progress in this round of bargaining, and it is all due to the power of our members and the support of other unions and workers supporting our issues.

On Strike in Michigan

From the Ann Arbor News

U-M grad instructors to walk out over contract dispute

by Dave Gershman | The Ann Arbor News

Saturday March 22, 2008, 7:08 PM

Graduate student instructors at the University of Michigan voted to hold a two-day walkout on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Graduate Employees Organization announced Saturday that its members voted 727 to 177 in favor of the job action. The union, which represents 1,700 instructors and staff assistants who teach part-time, is in a dispute with the university over wages and benefits in a new three-year contract.

U-M is offering annual pay increases of 3 percent a year, or the average pay increase given to faculty at the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, whichever is greater. The union is seeking a 9 percent hike in the first year of the contract, 3 percent hikes in the subsequent years, and stipends paid during the summer when graduate instructors are not teaching, according to the university.

The typical graduate student instructor teaches 16.5 to 20 hours a week, receiving a salary of $15,199 for the eight-month academic year, university-paid health and dental benefits, and a full tuition waiver, according to the university.

Union leaders say they're advocating for a living wage and say their pay doesn't measure up to what the university has listed on its financial aid Web site as the cost to attend U-M. They say their costs includes room and board, books and supplies, and personal expenses.

U-M says that figure has never been used in the context of setting appropriate union salaries.

I slept ten hours last night. I hafd a very strange dream involving some kind of battle of the bands at NYU and a vociferous argument between me and a male version of someone i "dated" when I was 15 about the drawbacks of Takamine and Ovation acoustic electric guitars when not plugged in. I am not sure what to make of it all. I very much wish spring break were not ending monday, and i'm particularly not looking forward to the forty midterms i'll have to deal with in two weeks' time.

a critical perspective on spitzer's "private matter"

This showed up in my inbox twice in the last hour. Sex work needs to be understood fundamentally as a labor question, and dealt with as such.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts
Shakti Ziller, Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK), swank@riseup.net 877-877-2004 x 2
Audacia Ray, 718.554.1714
Sarah Bleviss, Sex Workers Outreach Project NYC (SWOP-NYC), swop.nyc@gmail.com
Prostitutes of New York (PONY), pony@panix.com
Desiree Alliance, http://www.desireealliance.org/

WHAT ABOUT KRISTEN? New York Sex Worker Organizations Respond to Spitzer Scandal

New York, NY - In the last few days, Governor Eliot Spitzer has publicly admitted to being associated with an escort agency and is considering resignation. As sex worker advocates, we are concerned about the representation and fate of "Kristen" and sex workers who are being thrust into the spotlight because of the investigation into the Governor. We also share the widespread concern for Governor Spitzer's family.

Sex worker organizations urge the press and the public to focus on the violation of sex workers rights and the need to change these laws and policies, rather than simply on the story of one individual who has purchased sexual services.

"Nobody is talking about the impact of this story on 'Kristen' and other women, men and trans people who are currently working in the sex industry," Shakti Ziller of SWANK in NYC added, "Prostitutes disproportionately face punitive action after arrest as compared to clients. Whether or not she will face prison time, "Kristen" has been dragged into the spotlight and will be subjected to public humiliation. Shouldn't the police emphasis be on catching perpetrators of violent crime and protecting sex workers - not exposing adults who are consenting to a transaction? All she did was try to make a living."

"Governor Spitzer ran on a platform of being a different kind of politician and then portrayed an inaccurate image of himself. Being involved with the services of sex workers is a very common thing, if all forms of consensual sex work were decriminalized for adults involved in a consensual transaction, sex workers could access the services they need," says Dylan Wolfe of SWANK (Sex Workers Action New York).

Governor Spitzer took a lead role in developing the NY State Anti-Trafficking Law. Over the objections of advocates who worked directly with victims of human trafficking and with sex workers, Governor Spitzer pushed through penalty enhancements against clients of all sex workers. Sex worker advocates fought against such provisions because these policies drive people who need help further underground.

"Spitzer has stood up for workers' rights in certain capacities, but has not followed through with meeting the real needs of sex workers," Audacia Ray, author of Naked on the Internet, noted, "It would be great if the government could use money towards services, not punitive measures."

The press has picked up on the relationship that inter-state trafficking laws (under the Mann Act) have to this case. This connection illustrates a point that sex worker advocates have been making for a long time: Laws against inter-state transportation for the purposes of commercial sex are too often used for punishing people working as sex workers and those who work with and patronize them.

The exposure of Randall Tobias last year as a customer of an escort agency, Senator Vitter's rumored association with sex workers and now this recent news of Governor Spitzer, are continual reminders that the corruption and hypocrisy inherently associated with prohibiting consensual prostitution will always be brought to light. Shaming these men will do nothing to improve the nature of the sex industry and the deeply-rooted corruption that is associated with the prohibition of prostitution.

"The criminalization of prostitution breeds this type of hypocrisy and makes our politicians (and other public figures) vulnerable," says Carol Leigh of Sex Workers Outreach Project-USA. "This vulnerability exists until our society recognizes that consensual sexual behavior is private and these private acts should no longer be criminalized."

"Many of our clients are politicians, judges, lawyers and even police," Monica S., 26 of Brooklyn said. "It's odd that they spend so much effort putting us into jail, but then turn around and give us their money in exchange for sex. Why do they think they won't get caught breaking the laws that they make?"

The commentary on Dealbreaker.com, a Wall-Street news site, says about Wall-street's anti-Spitzer reaction to the 'Client 9' story: "'There is a God' was the first thought on Wall Street. The next thought is, 'Please don't let it be revealed that I'm Lucky Number 7.'"

# # # #

After a 45-hour sit in, anti-sweathop activists at York University in Toronto win big.

"We are exhausted but pleased with this commitment," said Terrance
Luscombe, a York University student and member of the Sustainable Purchasing
Coalition. "York students don't want our university to condone the use of
sweatshop labour and we don't understand why it took so long for university
administrators to join the 21st Century and make this simple commitment."
   The Sustainable Purchasing Coalition held a rally Thursday asking the
university to adopt students' proposed 'no-sweat' policy. Immediately
following the rally, the students attempted to deliver a petition containing
more than 1,000 signatures in support of a no-sweatshop policy to President
Shoukri. When they were told the president was unavailable to see them, the
students decided to stay. The sit-in continued with students camping out for
two nights.
   "This is an excellent way to mark the 100th anniversary of International
Women's Day," said Kelly Holloway, President of the York University Graduate
Students' Association. "Unfortunately millions of workers around the world,
and even in North America, are still paid appallingly low wages and denied
basic workplace rights. We look forward to seeing York's no-sweatshop policy
in place by next month."

Thank god for congressional subpoenas.

This is incredible.

Over the last decade, Yale’s endowment has more than tripled, to $22.5 billion. But, the University’s disclosure reveals, that gain came at a significant price: Last year, the fees it paid to external managers — investment specialists who run many of the funds in which Yale invests — amounted to more than four times what Yale spent on undergraduate financial aid, for example, according to News estimates.

On getting over before we go under.

Title taken from James Brown's "funky president," which was playing in Chipotle at around 11 AM today as i wolfed down a burrito before running off to the GSOC-organized forum The Future In Question: NYU Graduate Students Two Years After The Union Contract. (I wasn;t sure whether it was an omen of neoliberal cooptation or as ghostly encouragement for our continuing endeavors.

So five years ago Thursday, just after Education In The Streets, GESO hosted a teach-in in First & Summerfield's main chapel. I remember all the speakers, and Brenda Carter's introductory remarks. i have a pretty sick memory when it comes to FHUE events and UOC meetings. (1199 has another move!) But what I remembered most from that panel (and most of that day after EITS remains a euphoric blur, albeit possibly because of the "Trash Yale" controversy) was Gordon Lafer's comment that an undergraduate education at Yale was deeply an "education in cynicism." This stuck out so much that it made it to the quote page, alongside David Lee's radical churchspeak and Mark Wilson's declaration that if Yale continued to push Local 35 members out of the picture (by subcontracting jobs,) then union members would "take the camera and make our own damn picture."

I think what struck me about Lafer's words was the radical possibility inherent in them - the contradictions of faculty and administrative liberal rhetorics and the practices of union busting, neoliberal expansion, globalizing yale, all foment cynicism about the way the university works, but also posit a direct relationship between the political economy of the neoliberal university and the subjectivity of undergraduates that at a moment when 500 undergraduates had just taken to the streets in the middle of a blizzard to participate in a very different vision of what the university could look like, was deeply intriguing.

I raise all this not for nostalgia's sake, but rather i'm reminded of it because of today's forum, which GSOC's been working on planning for months and from which i just returned. Lafer spoke on the first panel of the day, along with Joanna Holzman and Randy Martin. Joanna gave a general and personal history of GSOC, spoke eloquently, as she often does, about how the contract and the union radically changed her graduate school experience. Randy Martin performed a really useful analysis of the financialization of the university, talking about the speculative logics of financial aid reform or lacks thereof, about the ways that NYU's endowment and expansion plans solicit alumni donations which produce the endowment as a hedge fund analogue, as a high risk investment in the university's real estate futures, and the implications of the denial of the presence of labor (the installation "of labor in the center of every curriculum".) Lafer talked about that cynicism again, about student government as either a game or a pun, about the ironies of the Sextonian erasure of faculty governance, about the difficulties of rebuilding after bitter strikes and defeats and moving forward in the "university of broken people." Lisa Duggan, speaking on the second panel, after Monika summarized the really important arguments she and Mike Palm make in their essay in The University Against Itself,) spoke about the broader agendas to which we should aspire, the power of unions as sites from which to launch movements unwilling to cede to the university all terrain not comfortably relegated to the parochial domain of business unionism, although Stephanie Hsu raised an important point about how this labor towards something other than a contract gets remunerated and valorized. It's an interesting point that Stephanie made, but i think we're weaker as a union if we don't figure out ways to organize around what Rick Levin once scorned as a "broader agenda" - which includes thinking about labor and difference in complex and careful ways.

I'm inspired by the turnout, excited about the fact that GSOC just had our first large public event since the strike ended, excited to see where this new organizing takes us, what we can build together, what struggles we can undertake together. And in the spirit of this week and what it means to those of us who were in New Haven in March of 2003, "mountain, move out of my way."

I just found this on the old Ga/Ta issues propaganda OPA site. (Created during the strike, invisible since.)

"RHETORIC"

Without union representation, graduate students will have no recourse to voice their concerns to the administration.

"REALITY"
The University has put in place an interim grievance procedure, and a representative group of graduate students is now working to create a new, permanent grievance process.

Additionally, the University has asked the GA community to design a statement of rights and responsibilities for the graduate student body.

Man, that interim grievance procedure sure worked well. And the "GA Community's" statement of rights and responsibilities for the graduate student body? I'm sure it'll be along any day now. And when it comes, it'll fix everything! Or was that one of those throwaway Randy Washington/Bryan Levine emails I haven't looked at in two years and which did absolutely nothing other than accord the union busting a very small veneer of fake legitimacy?

This was five years ago this week. More on that later. For an earlier meditation on such matters, see here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here and myriad other places all over this blog. Like i said, thoug. more later.