Baby Panda is clearly watching John Sexton and feels that NYU ought to immediately negotiate a contract with GSOC in good faith.

The Truth Is A Virus

The GSOC Rally/CD was great. I signed a card, got a pin, and joined the union. NYU American Studies profs were there en masse. I met and re-met some grad students in my department. I saw Morgan Fairchild speak in solidarity with us. There was a little drama around Sweeney, who wasn't particularly cogent or inspiring, which i will not get into here. ( He seemed very tired.) I saw Phoebe, Evan, Robin and a whole lot of GESO and other federation folks. Marching with Andrea and Phoebe and Bob and Brenda and Ann Marie and Jay and busloads of other folks i spent most of the last half-decade organizing with in one way or another seems like a pretty solid way to start grad school.

The title of this post references Pump Up The Volume, which isn't a very good movie, but i like the viral metaphor in terms of me spreading what i learned in New Haven on to another campus and exchanging experiences and information via organizing. Which i am going to have to figure out how to do again soon. Organizing, i mean. This scares but also excites me. Kind of wish i'd gotten arrested. Mad props to those who did. I'm sure there will be more opportunities for me, on one campus or another.

What the fuck is happening in New Haven, by the way?

This story is terribly written. Doesn't the times style manual say anything about overly snarky overuse of the passive voice?

through the looking glass

My department has union folks come to TA trainings to talk about the contract fight and advertises this on departmental emails. I don't get the sense that this has ever been permissible at Yale, even in a department like AMST, where, while there's some strong faculty support for the federation in general and even GESO in particular, there are also a number of senior faculty who've espoused decidedly anti-union views and interacted with their students thusly, something that remains true even with Brodhead's departure and Butler's promotion. The difference in faculty support between NYU and Yale, even in a department like mine, is pretty staggering. I want to figure out whether this is because NYU hasn't yet run the kind of anti-union campaigns Yale has, or because of some more "essential" difference in the way academics here understand what they (we? holy &^#$) do.

A quick and frightening link to a story about incidents of racism at UVa, all in the first week of school.

some block quotes while I try to figure out a longer post

Jonathan Tasini has some questions about the head of the AFMA he wants the press to answer:

To explain his relationship with a management firm, McCormick
Advisory Group, headquartered in Laconia, NH, and with a law firm, Seham Seham
Meltz & Peterson, based in Westchester County, NY, which has a long history
of representing management in the airline industry.
to explain how The
McCormick Group also founded the Professional Flight Attendants Association
(PPFA), which successfully raided an AFL-CIO union at Northwest Airlines.
To
disclose what the Seham law firm gets from AMFA and whether he knows that the
Seham firm has long represented airline managements in opposing workers and
their unions

While Phoebe excerpts in detail the fantastic Chronicle of Higher Education piece on poor (ridiculously wealthy) embattled and controversial Yale investment czar David Swensen. I'll quote from the article itself rather than Phoebe's post. (Subscription required.)

Mr. Swensen is embedded on the New Haven campus. He wants you to know that
he and the endowment, "a symbol of Yale's wealth and power," are a part of
the university.

Just don't get too close.

Only a handful of Yale's most powerful leaders are allowed to peer inside
the endowment's machinery. For everyone else, investment of the
university's billions is a black-box affair. It is a strategy, critics
say, that is long on secretive investments in nontraditional assets like hedge
funds, venture-capital funds, and other private-equity funds, but that sells
short external oversight. The names of the funds that Yale invests in? Their
strategies for making money? Their investment returns? Privileged
information.
***
But critics of the Yale endowment's management have peered under the veil
of secrecy just enough to reveal what they say are questionable investments that
have harmed people and the environment. The activists -- students, alumni,
members of Yale's unions -- acknowledge Mr. Swensen's enrichment of the
endowment, which in the 2004-5 academic year pumped $565-million into the
$290.2-million collected in donations. They want assurances, nonetheless, that
the opaque endowment will shun shady deals, no matter how much money is at
stake. Mr. Swensen refuses to meet with them.

At issue, say disclosure advocates, is Yale's soul, the essence of which is
articulated in the university's motto and emblazoned on its seal: Lux etVeritas.
Light and truth. "I'm suspicious of the notion that you have to be
secretive in order to get things done," says Roxana N. Tynan, a 1988 graduate
and a member of Yale Alumni for Social Justice.

"Yale is a private institution, but it plays a public role," continues
Ms.Tynan, who works for the L.A. Alliance for a New Economy, a nonprofit group
that got Los Angeles to adopt a living-wage law in 1997. "At a minimum, it
needs to be transparent to members of its own community. Money isn't
blind. Whether we like it or not, [it can be] used to support or it can be
used to oppose a problem regime or immoral practices. It doesn't wash that
it's OK that the only thing that matters is the financial return to the
institution. "

For an endowment manager, however, light and truth can be dark and
dangerous. "Disclosure is just adverse to the investment process,"
says Mr.Swensen.

oh god

The byline, not the article. The Yale Media Conspiracy continues.

I guess this is what Jon Butler was talking about. Looks like the women are just SOL. Now, why would anyone want a union?