And now that I’m done kidding, let me tell you briefly what is really behind the Yale kerfuffle.
The graduate student union (GESO) is not managing to get recognized as a union by the administration. It hasn’t managed to get recognized for way too long. And to compensate for that, the union foments these ridiculous outbursts to pretend like it’s doing something.
I know how this shit works only too well.
Why isn’t a graduate student union recognized?
Are they simply too incompetent to take seriously?
Or is this more Northeastern elite hypocrisy? A unionized workforce for thee, grunt laborers with no rights for me.
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Both of your answers are right. 🙂 The administration sucks dick and the union is just as competent in this worthy endeavor.
As one of the organizers at this union, I was once present at a long-awaited encounter between the union and the Dean of Graduate Studies. We believed that getting a formal encounter with the Dean would be a great step towards getting recognized.
At the meeting, though, I felt intensely humiliated and horrified when, one after another, union leaders started demanding that grades in grad courses should be abolished because they traumatize and alienate grad students. I think you know me enough to imagine my reaction to the claim that “grades traumatized me.” I was livid.
The union tends to put ahead the interests of the very wealthy members, which is another thing that drives me nuts. The central claim we kept advancing is that grad students should be funded for 8-10 years to work on their degree. Nobody in the union seemed to give a toss about people like me who do not come from wealth and need to graduate ASAP in order to start paying bills. I could not even get myself heard whenever I tried to suggest that it would also be helpful to put some mechanisms in place to help those of us who wanted to graduate sooner. And I think you know me enough to understand how loud I am when I want to bring a point across.
Sorry for the rant but this is a big part of my life and I can’t control the need to talk about it. 🙂
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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