Hit the Classes!

Next week WLUFA is having a strike vote allowing its leaders to call for a strike after March 19th. It feels odd to imagine that most students still either do not know, care, or know enough about such a proceeding that could shape their year so much - in two weeks time they might have to cross the the picket lines to get to those classes they still have. That is, if the full-time faculty, which overwhelmingly supports the part-timers, decides to cross the picket lines themselves to teach. That says nothing of the staff knowing that they are also extremely supportive of WLUFA. The university might grind down to a halt - all to send a message to the administration.

The great misfortune is that the collateral damage of all this, the students, have also the most powerful voice on this campus over what gets done - when all 14,000 of us speak, everyone has to listen. Collectively, our concerns have force. What people need to be is informed and how best to do it than speaking in classes?

Just recently we made the petition available for download, so print a few off and distribute them on campus and give it to your friends to sign but most importantly - ask your profs if you can speak in their classes. All four of mine (two part-time, two full-time) allowed me to stand up and in the first or last ten minutes of a class give a brief summary of what's going on, pass around the petitions, urge everyone to e-mail in, and then answer a few questions. You should do the same. After you gather the petitions drop them off at the WLUFA office in 2C12. We have over 1,600 signatures now, imagine if every class had somebody give a talk. It would be remarkable! 14,000 well informed, unhappy individuals will give the leverage our part-time profs need in order to avoid a strike and get what they want in terms of compensation for all the hard work they do in teaching courses because, let's face it, 6,000 dollars a course is minuscule. They deserve much more.

But more so, we have requested permission from profs to come and speak in their classes to inform the students and circulate the petition around even more. Majority have replied favorably, so much so, that two people can't cover them alone. So we made the schedule of classes which would hear what we have to say available for everyone. Now, you can just e-mail the prof that teaches the course, come over with a few petitions, give a talk, and then gather the signatures.

With many people, working separately in their free time but for a collective goal - they will get it. We have done much, there has never been a student-run, student-organized group helping the faculty in their negotiations, it's unprecedented. What we need now is the use of people's individual initiatives - the burden of change falls on us.