Wednesday, November 13, 2002

union mania...yet again

after not blogging for over a week, am yet again including another entry about the yale unionization effort. i really need to find a new topic, or at least write more often. anyway, i convinced pyscho union christie (that would be a great barbie doll, complete with a placard and some leaflets) that i would take over the responsibility of organizing my peers, so she will quite visiting them in their homes.

this is followed by my weekly post-dawson's chat with heather about the union, in which she points out that a) she still doesn't understand the burning issue the union wants to discuss with the university administration and b) it totally sucks that every grad student will be included under the union contract, so even the guys who aren't in the union and never wanted one have to pay dues (well, an agency fee that is pretty much like dues) and don't even really get a voice in saying how their voice would be used by a union. for instance, if you have a problem with the union contract, tough shit. i think this is a really important issue, especially since ~1/2 the students aren't in the union. i talk to christie and totally feel like this is important and then i talk to other people and think, "damn, are these people crazy?"

heather takes the approach that she doesn't owe the university anything and the university doesn't owe her anything. you come to school, get your degree and that's it. i guess if you take the PhD on aisle 5 stance, a union really doesn't make a whole lot of since, and i don't think she understands why grad students would like to have a voice in policy making decisions about how the acadamie is run. but how to do that without alienating or misrepresenting the people who don't want to have a voice is a question i can't answer.

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