Thursday, March 24, 2016

GAU event to discuss response to budget crisis

A  link to an article in today's DE, in the unlikely event anyone is reading this blog and not reading the DE. On Saturday at 4:00 there will be a meeting in the library Guyon's Auditorium, sponsored by Graduate Assistants United, to brainstorm ideas on how students can respond to the crisis. Students, staff, and community members are welcome.

One of the lessons from 2011 was the value of student involvement in a crisis situation. It's one thing to have state workers (faculty & staff) protesting for things that are good in themselves but also in workers' self-interest (tenure in 2011, funding in 2016), another thing for students to be protesting for education. This isn't to imply that staff shouldn't be active, only that even when they are active—as they certainly were in Wisconsin—their efforts could be attacked as being self-interested in a way students' efforts cannot.

One does have to love the DE headline, "Graduate Assistants Plan Meeting to Solve Budget Crisis". You'd think it would require rose-tinted glasses to type "meeting to solve"—much less a meeting to solve this crisis.

The GA United website doesn't yet mention this event, but has been featuring useful updates on their negotiations and relevant events on other campuses, so is definitely worth a look.

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