Category: The Strike of 2006

The news tonight: the administrations’ response to the union’s offer of to enter binding arbitration was, basically, no (the bad news), but what about an application for a fact-finding proceedure? That’s the good news. Here’s a link to the letter.

Again, IAMAL, but as I understand it, what this means is that a third party would be brought in, this person would look at the numbers and arguments, and write a report about what they think. The main difference between this and binding arbitration is it’s not binding– that is, either side could look at the report, decide that they don’t like what it says, and not change the offer. Though that would obviously have some consequences.

Now, once again in an effort to make sure everyone understands that this is still a battle for dominance, President Fallon’s letter calls for the faculty to first end its strike and then enter this fact finding mission. This might be legal semantics, but it sure sounds to me like an effort of getting the union to give in, even if just a little.

When is someone going to be a grown-up here?

The union has called a meeting at 2 pm tomorrow, and I am assuming that there will be talk about this. Hopefully some kind of vote. Personally, I think the union should welcome this as a positive step and I think the union ought to suggest two possible paths to resolving this mess:

• Once again invite the administration back to the table for talks (remember, they left! not the union!) and see if we can’t take one more try at reaching an agreement. Hell, do it on Saturday– as it is, the union is calling for folks to take a day off from picketing then anyway. Let the administration claim we’re not on strike that day. Get these parties together and I bet we get a deal.
• Or, if that’s not in the cards, let’s take the fact finding thing. If the union is confident in its numbers and was willing to call for binding arbitration, then the fact finder is not much different. I’d suggest that the union use the language of “suspending” instead of ending the strike until this is all resolved, but again, we would have done that with binding arbitration.

  To me, this is a win-win for the union. It’s highly unlikely that this fact finder would discover the administration was offering us too much. If the fact finding finds that the administration’s offer is about fair, okay, then let’s take it. If the fact finder finds that we really ought to be getting 4% or 5% a year for five years, well, that’d be better than great.

  Let’s get on with this, folks. I want this blog to be about computers and writing stuff again.

It was another day on the picket line– a hot one, too. I have to remember to get on some sunscreen the next time I go out there, which, I predict, will be tomorrow morning. There seems no sort of settlement or even a renewal of talks anytime soon, even though I can think of NO ONE who does not both of these things, not faculty, students, adjuncts, lecturers, staff, administrators, NO ONE.

Well, not no one, maybe. I’m not sure the top leadership of the administration or the top leadership of the union are ready for this to end.

Anyway, I started out the day at Pray-Harrold, the building where I teach, even though I am not scheduled to be on campus at all today. Mostly, I passed out flyers and stickers to students. One thing I discovered the other day: it’s really hard to hold a picket sign and to hand out flyers to students. Maybe, if we’re out long enough, I’ll get the dexterity to do both.

Students still seem to be very much behind us. I talked with lots of students who had words of encouragement, lots of students who had questions, lots who were interested in learning more about the issues. And sure, there were plenty of students who were either apathetic or had just probably had enough.

Curiously, there were not administrators out there talking to students. At least not as far as I can tell.

Lots and lots of students were wearing their “I Support the Faculty” stickers and the buttons that we have been passing out that say the same thing have become a coveted item. By the way, here’s a picture of my last of these buttons:

I’ll give it out tomorrow, I hope.

There were more student protests, small but large and enthusiastic. While I was hanging around/picketing outside of Pray-Harrold, a group of roving student protesters came by:

Slight tangent #1: I don’t want to be too critical of the way the EMU-AAUP is running things, and I realize that I have the benefit of not actually being at the office making various decisions. But in a situation like this, it’s time for the union to get some outside help with things like Public Relations and event organization. I’m not saying that we need to replace Bunsis as a spokesperson– I think he’s doing fine– and by “outside,” all I mean are members of the faculty who are not on the Executive Committee of the EMU-AAUP. We have a couple of PR and print journalism folks in our department who probably would have been happy to help. As I understand it, the PR unit of the EMU-AAUP is pretty much Howard. /tangent

Oh, one more fun-fact about picketing by Pray-Harrold: I tried to hand a leaflet to one of the few faculty who has crossed the lines, none other than former provost (and by “former,” I mean he was asked to not do that job anymore) Paul Schollaert. He didn’t take one.

With a couple colleagues, I marched over to the construction area for the new union and then to one of the construction enterances. The union has pickets here because there are a variety of unions that won’t cross lines, and, apparently, we’ve been reasonably effective in disrupting some deliveries and such at EMU. As I understand it, one of these colleagues has a couple stories to share about run-ins with the campus police and turing around trucks with her sign.

Rumor #1 (though I should point out that all of these rumors come from fairly reliable sources; I can’t just confirm the truth of these things independently): Speaking of disrupting things around here, I heard the other day that a picket line stopped a Coca-Cola delivery truck. The driver stopped the truck in the street; I guess he was a Teamster or something. He came over and talked to the strikers politely enough while an unmarked white van came up. A guy got out of the van and started unloading soda from the big delivery truck and into the smaller van. When the strikers asked what was going on, the driver said “that’s a supervisor.”

Rumor #1b: The same thing has happened with UPS. While the delivery guys in the UPS union won’t cross picket lines, their supervisors will.

Either way, it’s not a perfect “ring of steel” around the university. But it’s pretty good.

After some picketing, I headed over to Bombadill’s to hold some quasi-office hours for students, which for me this term means graduate assistants who are teaching first year composition.

This leads me to tangent #2: One of the many things this strike has made me think about a lot lately is what exactly constitutes “work” for a faculty member. Both the union and the administration have concentrated on the most visible work faculty do, which is teach. But I would say that less than a third of my work involves classroom teaching. So much more of my job is meetings, scholarship, advising, answering emails from students, duties as assigned, etc., etc. And this doesn’t even cover the release time I get to do quasi-administrative work. I spent about 3 or 4 hours on Monday going through a backlog of email, most of it from students seeking advising or making inquiries about our programs. Is this “work?” Because of my Interim WPA duties, I feel a certain obligation to at least be available to the graduate students teaching for the first time. It would seem awfully inhumane to not be there to these folks during a really really stressful time for them. And, by the way, as far as I can tell, everyone had a fine first day teaching experience.

Clearly, I am not the only one who made some personal decisions about what work they would and wouldn’t do while on strike. When I walked into Bombadill’s, it was like EMU in exile. Someone was conducting some version of a class in the front part of the place– forty or so students sitting around while the prof lectured. In the back, some folks were working on a grant; as they said, the such-and-such (I don’t know if it was the NSF or NEH or whatever) has deadlines that have nothing to do with the strike. /tangent

Rumor #2: Speaking of the teaching part of things: it seems pretty clear to me that the great majority of courses that are supposed to be taught by faculty aren’t being taught by anyone at all. I know of at least one department head who has told lecturers and part-timers that there was no way he/she would ask non-tenure-track faculty to teach the faculty’s classes. This is not the only story I’ve heard along these lines. In short, it’s just patently untrue that the university is running just hunky-dory without faculty.

Anyway, this part of my day ended with a couple of conversations with administrative-types in positions of knowing some things. I won’t be mentioning names, obviously.

Rumor #3: The union has been feeding the faculty a pack of lies, they knew they were going on strike back in July, the union was really the one that pushed the administration out the door Tuesday night, etc., etc., etc. I don’t really think these things are true, but at the same time, I don’t think they are false or lies, either. I think it’s just an indication of it all depends on your perspective and where you get your information, and if you’re on the administration side of the fence, you get a different story.

However, as I pointed out to this person, the fact remains that a) it was Fallon et al who issued this “take it or we’re leaving” letter, and b) they left the table. And as I pointed out to this administrative-type, the fact of the matter is the administration’s bargaining team left the table. Period.

But let’s just pretend this person was right and the union bargaining team wasn’t really negotiating anymore, and they were the ones forcing the strike. All the administration team had to do was stay at the table. If they had done that, we probably would have had a deal early Wednesday morning. If, for some reason, the union team still hadn’t agreed to the deal, all the administration would have had to have done is release their last offer and then let the union bargaining team explain that one to the faculty.

In short, if the administration tries to break the union with ultimatums, as they appear to be doing here, all they are going to do is piss faculty off and create a storm of bad publicity. If the administration wants to minimalize the role and appeal of the faculty union, the best thing they could do is make decent offers to the faculty in May instead of August, make them pubic, and spare us all the opportunity for these stand-offs.

Rumor #4: Folks on the Board of Regents, who hate Howard Bunsis with the passion of a 1,000 burning suns and who see him as synonymous with all of the faculty at EMU, think that they ought to fire all of us ala the Air Traffic Controllers in the Reagan era. Now, as we talked about this more, I think what this administrator was really saying is that there is a portion of the Regents who would opt for this, but not a majority.

The Board of Regents and the administration probably hate Bunsis, sure. He’s a bulldog and a passionate guy. But as a faculty person, I kind of look at it this way: the administration pays Jim Greene several hundred dollars an hour to play super-duper hardball in these talks. What do you think most of the faculty think about him? And really, are faculty supposed to respond to these rather, well, mean tactics with butterflies and sunshine?

Besides, I’m pretty sure that before they actually fired us, the administration would have to give faculty some kind of notice. And let me just say this right now for the record: if I get a letter or an email or something from the administration that says “quit this strike stuff right now or you’re fired,” I’m going back to work. I’d be pretty cranky about it and I think it would be devestating to the institution and I’d make a point of making these feelings known at every possible opportunity and I would probably seek other employment, but I’d go back to work.

Anyway, I’m not too worried about this, really. For one thing, as another administrator-type said to me today, it’d be a paperwork nightmare.

Rumor #5: Fallon and Valvo either didn’t talk with anyone on the negotiating team or folks in the provost office before they sent their now infamous letter. Or maybe they did talk with people and sent it anyway despite the advice.

Okay, this last one really is just a guess/rumor. But I think it’s a good one.

… just let me know. I’ve received a handful of positive responses (none negative yet), and I’d be more than happy to present this as some kind of electronic petition/letter/etc. I could just add “on behalf of the following people” at the end, and resend a copy of it to the powers that be, to the Fallon and Valvo and the other board of regents, to the Ann Arbor News, whoever.

To be a part of it, do me a favor. Either:

• Add a comment here with your name (the real one, please!), and how you fit into this picture (professor, adjunct, senior, incoming student, parent, etc.).

  Or…

• Send me an email message. My email address is skrause at emich dot edu (obviously, there’s an “@” and a “.” where I say “at” and “dot,” but I get enough spam messages as it is.

Last night, everyone at EMU got an email from the “VP of Academic Affairs” (though it was signed by the Hartmut Hoft, who is really the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences). Here is the email that I sent to them (and also to Howard Bunsis) in response:

*********

Dear Dean Hoft, Provost Loppnow, Professor Bunsis, and anyone else who happens to be reading this:

Thanks for your “Negotiation Update” for 09/06/06. I read your email with interest because, obviously, I have been following the negotiation process closely and I have some strong feelings about how these talks have been going. I’ve also been writing quite a bit about the strike in a blog space that I keep that normally has to do with more scholarly matters, and I should tell you that I intend to publish this letter in that space at some point.

I am writing now to urge the administration to return to the bargaining table. I am certain that if the administration’s team returns to the table, we can get a contract not unlike the one that your team submitted before walking out of the talks Tuesday night. Return to the talks so I can return to the classroom.

Like all of you, I am an academic. My Ph.D. training was in rhetoric and much of my teaching and scholarship involves strategies for persuasion and the presentation of evidence in various forms of argumentation. As a result of this background (not to mention my “real world” experiences of working at Eastern since 1998, and working at other universities as a faculty member, part-time instructor, and graduate instructor since 1988), I think of myself, in these and many similar matters, as a skeptic.

Because of this skepticism, I do not entirely trust the EMU-AAUP. The current incarnation of the union is certainly much better than the dark days of my brief experiences on the Executive Committee. But for complex reasons, I am quite certain that rank-and-file faculty are not getting the complete story from the union about the contract, and about it’s strategies at the bargaining table. Let me stress that I believe that the people currently on the EMU-AAUP Executive Committee and the bargaining team are not attempting to be devious or deceiving; I just don’t think I’m getting enough information to accept the EMU-AAUP’s interpretation without question.

However, I don’t entirely trust the administration either. I could use the same phrasing in this paragraph as the last one: I think the current incarnation of the administration is better than the recent past, but I think (again, for complex reasons) we’re not getting the full story about the strategies they are using, and so forth. I don’t think the administration is being completely candid about what money the institution does (or does not) have, and I think there a variety of both good and bad reasons for this lack of information. Again, let me stress that I do not think that the folks on the administration’s side of the bargaining table, especially the people likely to get this message, are devious or deceiving: I just don’t think I’m getting enough information to accept the administration’s version of events without question.

With this in mind, you can imagine my mixed feelings about the negotiation update sent by the administration. On the one hand, it strikes me as a fairly reasonable offer, one where the salary compensation, the insurance options, and other provisions of the contract seem fair. On the other hand, I knw that there are many things here that the administration is conveniently leaving out or minimizing. This is, after all, a basic strategy of how to present evidence in order to persuade an audience.

Conversely, the union is taking a similar strategy by bringing attention to the weaknesses in the administration’s offer, pointing out what it lacks, and raising questions about the basic math of exactly how much compensation the faculty can plan to receive. Again, this is the sort of thing we teach in a basic argumentative writing classes.

So, what am I to do? How am I supposed to interpret this offer from the administration, which, at face value, seems like an acceptable deal? How am I supposed to decide who to believe?

Well, for me, the tipping point began with the letter that President Fallon and Regent Chair Valvo had Dean Hoft hand the EMU-AAUP negotiating team on Sunday night. I can only speculate on the intentions of this letter, and I know that the initial reason publicly given for this unprecedented fixed deadline was a desire to “hurry things along” for the first day of class. But I can tell you that the actual effect of this letter was to galvanize my faculty colleagues. I cannot tell you how many conversations I had via email this past weekend and during the day while picketing on Tuesday with fellow faculty who were perplexed and angered by this rather thinly veiled threat. Many of my colleagues who either share my skepticism about the union or are simply against the idea of striking were aghast by this letter. As one of my colleagues said in an email to me on Monday of this week, “If we’ve made progress to that point (of the negotiations), I cannot imagine them walking away just because 10 PM hits. And if they do, I’ll almost become enthusiastic about being on strike against them.”

Now, I don’t have any particular inside knowledge about what happened that fateful night Tuesday, and, of course, I am a skeptic. But here’s what I do know, largely because the other side has not contradicted these claims, and also because I was outside of Boone Hall Tuesday night:

* The administration didn’t provide the faculty the data they requested on health care until after we were on strike.

* The so-called “last, best offer” was presented to the EMU-AAUP at about 9:45 pm or so– not exactly a lot of time for the team to mull it over. And yet the faculty team did come up with a counter-offer before 10 pm. (And as an aside: I have a gut feeling that the administration could have made something similar to this “final offer” in June.)

* At 10 pm (perhaps a little earlier, depending on which watch you were looking at), the mediator left the building, walked across Cross, got in his car, and drove away.

* About ten minutes after that, the administration’s negotiation team left Boone Hall. It was not a pretty site. Marching to the tune of the loud and persistent protester chant “Talk, Don’t Walk,” the administration’s team exited Boone, walked out to the sidewalk on Washtenaw/Cross, and walked around to a side entrance of Welch Hall. I won’t speak for everyone, but I for one was angry, perplexed, and ashamed, and, simultaneously, I felt sorry for that group of administrators who, I hope, were merely following orders.

In any event, three things are very clear to me at this stage. First, this action by President Fallon and Regent Valvo has been a tremendous blunder and has had almost the exact opposite impact of its stated purpose. Instead of forcing a “quick end” to the contract negotiations, the administration’s ultimatum has angered and galvanized faculty, and it has further eroded the rank-and-file’s trust in the administration. And, looking at this as a rhetorician, it seems to me that this move has also strengthened the union’s hand.

Second, neither side is likely to simply come back to the bargaining table at this stage, I think largely because this contract negotiation has morphed into a power struggle between the upper administration and the union. There are many colorful euphemisms to describe this stand-off; I believe one that is “PG-rated” is “pissing contest.” Caught in the middle are faculty like myself and the students we would like to be teaching.

Third, as is evident in the material sent to the university community with this negotiation update, the two parties were not that far apart. Glancing through the materials as they are presented here and without the context of actually being at the bargaining table, I can see that there are still some issues that I think need to be resolved, things like the rate of pay for continuing education classes, the rate at which we get to the 1% addition to TIAA-CREF, the missing language about hiring more faculty, etc. So it is not a deal that I think our bargaining team should have automatically taken. Still, it seems to me that this package is close enough, and it seems abundantly clear to me that if the administration had stayed at the table with the union, faculty would have been in classrooms on Wednesday.

So, it is with all that in mind that I urge the parties to come together and finish this deal. If the administration is planning on getting some sort of court order to force faculty back into the classroom, I suggest they get on with it. The union has suggested binding arbitration to resolve this matter, an option that seems extremely fair to me. And, of course, the union has never left the bargaining table, figuratively or literally, as I understand it. The administration’s team could return on a moment’s notice and I am sure we could have a deal.

I look forward to the end of this contract dispute and getting back into the classroom. It will take a tremendous amount of work on everyone’s part to restore some sense of trust tainted with academic skepticism after this strike is over, but I for one am willing to do that work. But I will end this now because I am late for my spot with my fellow faculty members on the picket line, the place I will be until the negotiations resume and a deal is made.

Sincerely,

–Steve

Steven D. Krause
Associate Professor
Writing Program Coordinator/Interim Director of First Year Writing
Department of English Language and Literature
Eastern Michigan University | Ypsilanti, MI 48197
734-487-1363 | http://www.stevendkrause.com

I just wanted to post a shout-out to WEMU for their very good coverage of the strike to date. If you visit their homepage, they have links to some (all?) of the morning interviews they’ve been doing with folks from both the administration and the union. Great stuff; makes me proud to be a WEMU contributor.

Conversely, I want to give a bit BOOOOOOOO!! to Michigan Public Radio, which has done an unbelieveably piss-poor job of covering the strike at EMU. I know that most Ann Arborites and most of the folks over at U of Michigan don’t even realize that Eastern’s campus is only eight or so miles away from theirs, but this lousy coverage is really unexcusable. For example, this story linked to their web site sounds almost exactly like the EMU press release on homepage. Makes me glad to be a WEMU contributor.

So c’mon, Michigan Public Radio! Chariety Nebbie (SP???), somebody over there, get in the car, make the 10 minute commute to that distant and mysterious land, Ypsilanti, and do a little reporting!

I couldn’t be at the student rally this afternoon, but one of my colleagues was there. He sends these words and pictures:

“Today (9/6) at 4:00 a sizeable (~40?) group of students gathered in front of Welch hall to voice their support for the faculty in the ongoing strike and negotiations for a fair contract. They began by cheering beside the fountain, and after 10 minutes or so, as their numbers grew, a bull-horn emerged, and the chant extended, and they marched around, and then THROUGH Welch hall, calling on the administration to come back to the negotiation table.

“We’re here! Where are you?
Administration EMU-
No contract–No class!

“While the numbers were by no means huge, many of the faculty who witnessed it were moved by the gesture.”

I’ll mention two other things: first, as my colleague told me, these students were LOUD, complete with a bull-horn. To top it all off, they took their rally, bull-horn and all, through Welch Hall (e.g., where the administrators live). Pretty cool, and the thing is it’s not like the administration is going to get them arrested.

Second, my wife and son and I drove by Welch Hall at about 5:30 or so, and there was still a pretty good-sized group out there. Anyway, I for one certainly appreciate the support.

Here are some pictures:

Let me start witha quick “news round-up” as I have it from stuff I can find on the web:

• “Strike at EMU leave students feeling confused,” from the Detroit Free Press. It’s confusing to everyone, actually. One quote from the article though speaks to a slightly larger issue: “‘A lot of teachers are sending e-mails to their students saying that class is canceled, but the administration is saying something different,’ said (Amanda) Hamon, a 19-year-old sophomore from Bryan, Ohio (and who is also the editor of the student paper, Eastern Echo. ‘Students don’t understand it’s a personal choice; it’s up to the professors. Not all of the professors are in the union.'” See, this is kind of a problem: our own students, even students who are presumably informed (like the editor of the student paper) don’t really understand the differences between a tenure-track faculty member (professors, associate professors, and assistant professors), a full-time lecturer, a part-time adjunct instructor, and a graduate assistant. Well, even though we might all look the same and we all give grades the same way, it’s the first group, the tenure-track faculty, who are a) much more empowered than the other folks who teach and look like professors, and b) on strike. Also, if you are a professor (or associate or assistant professor) at EMU, then you are in the union. There are a few– and I mean like 10 or 20 people– who have opted out of the union, but that’s about it. The other people who teach at EMU– lecturers, part-timers, instructors, grad students, etc., etc.– are not professors.
• “Negotiations between EMU, faculty union break down,” in the Detroit News online. There’s a kind of throw-away line in the story: “The administration ‘walked away’ from negotiations after the union made a counter-proposal, according to the AAUP Web site.” The reporter seems to have put “walked away” in quotes to suggest it was a sort of metaphoric thing. Nah, they literally walked away. I watched it.
• The Chronicle of Higher Ed has an entry about the strike on its daily news blog. It’s a pretty good story, too. I put a comment on it pointing to this blog….
• “Classes start at EMU today with professors on strike,” in today’s Ann Arbor News. I’m getting this off of the web site, so I’m curious to see where it’s located in the paper– I hope page one. Anyway, my favorite quote: “‘There will be someone to greet the students in every class,’ said Karen Valvo, chairwoman of the EMU Board of Regents, in an interview Tuesday night.” Well, I wasn’t in the classrooms or anything today, but I know that that didn’t happen.
• Finally, I came across the university’s official strike information page today; though to be honest, I don’t think it’s that “informative,” really.

Anyway, my day today with the strike has been pretty simple. I went down to Pray-Harrold to picket at about 11 am and I was there until about 1:30 pm or so. Stood around with my sign, passed out fliers, talked with my faculty colleagues, and I talked with a lot of students. I think the students at EMU are really going to help the faculty stay strong on this, mostly because of where a lot (if not most) of our students come from. See, over at the University of Michigan, the students are more than likely to have parents who are in some version of “management;” at EMU, our students are more than likely to have parents (or other relatives) in some version of “labor.” My wife and both have received several emails from students wondering about what to do because (as one said) “no one in my family has ever crossed a picket line.”

Picketing today reminded me quite a bit of picketing back in 2000, which is when we were on strike after the first week of classes. Because faculty were supposed to picket in front of the buildings where they teach and when they teach or hold office hours, we were a lot more spread out than we have been at various rallies and such. So it’s all pretty mellow. We did pass out a lot of information and A LOT of these red stickers that say “I support my faculty” on them. Those are a hit with the students; everyone loves stickers.

From where I was standing, I could see Dennis Beagen talking to a group of faculty in his (I think now former) department, Communications and Theater Arts. I thought the administration said they wouldn’t talk to us anymore? I saw Hartmut Hoft walking from Pray-Harrold toward Welch with an enormous briefcase/shoulderbag of stuff. There was a photographer from one of the Detroit papers there, and I heard that Channel 4 was doing a pretty big story on a different part of campus. And I saw some unidentified people in suits who looked like the were trying to figure out who was picketing, what classes were running, what was generally going on, etc.

Anyway, the talk among faculty was obviously on the administration’s walk-out move last night. Apparently, the administration made an offer that basically boiled down to 3% a year for five years, along with some other things. In principle, this would have probably been okay with me because it would have probably meant, after paying around 2 to 2.5% of my salary in insurance, a very modest raise and not a cut. Predictably, the administration is saying that this is the best deal ever, and the EMU-AAUP says it’s all crap.

Regardless of the interpretation here, the problem is the administration walked away from the table. What saddens/angers me about all this more is if this really was the offer the administration had on the table at 9:45 pm last night, I am certain we would have reached a deal in plenty of time to be teaching classes today. Instead, the talks are at this stupid impasse. Fallon, Valvo, et. al are not likely to back away from their stooopid “take our offer or we’re going home” move anytime too soon. Conversely, the union team clearly has the upper-hand right now. They’re not the ones that walked away from talks; in fact, as I understand it, the negotiating team has set up a table on campus and is waiting for the administration team to come and bargain. (There’s a teeny picture of this on the emu-aaup web site; if anyone has a larger picture, send it to me, okay?)

My best guess/hope is that Fallon, Valvo, et. al will be told– surprise, surprise!– faculty really did go on strike, and they really didn’t teach their classes, and, under pressure, they will reluctantly go back to the bargaining table on Thursday or so. If that happens, I think we’ll have a deal in 24 hours. Or the administration will take us to court and try to get an injunction to force faculty back to work. That probably won’t work; in fact, it’s likely that a judge would force an argeement. But as I’ve said before, I think a court order would be great. Faculty could both teach and be on strike!

Okay, first a small preamble: thanks again to the kind words and thoughts from people who have been reading and posting here, and also telling me either in person or in email that they’ve appreciated what I’ve written. As of now, which as I type this phrase means 11:20 PM on Tuesday, I’ve had 218 page “visits” (which is defined, as I understand it, as someone spending some time and looking at a number of different entries on my site) and 486 page “views” (which is basically someone clicking to the site, probably from a search engine, and then leaving relatively quickly). It’s funny how these things work; for me, the strike is as much a “media event” as it is anything else, which I suppose is perfectly appropriate given my scholarship and writing.

Second, I also want to direct readers’ attentions to Paul Leighton’s Blog, “PaulsJusticeBlog.” Normally, Paul writes/thinks about issues of crime and criminology and stuff like that– from a lefty point of view– but he has been thinking/writing a lot about the strike lately, especially since he’s on the EMU-AAUP Executive Committee right now and hip-deep in the negotiations. So he’s POV is obviously pretty biased, but it’s also pretty informed. He talks a lot on his blog about the nitty-gritty of negotiations. Very useful.

Okay: So, here’s what happened tonight:

I created a podcast/audio file that pretty much captures the night experiences for me (I’ll explain the difference between audio files and podcasts later, or you can read my article in Computers and Composition Online about teaching online classes with blogs. But I digress…). It’s about 9:30 minutes long, it’s an MP3 file, and it’s about 10.9 MB, and it’s linked right here. Just click on the link, and your browser should just play it. Actually, I think it turned out pretty well because I was able to capture some good audio with just my iPod and a microphone attached to it, including the faculty chanting at the adminstration’s team and Howard talking to folks after they left. And, if I do say so myself, I think this file really captures the moment better than these words here. Trust me, it’s worth the download.

But in case you don’t want to/can’t listen to that file, here’s what I thought happened, more or less:

• By the time I showed up at EMU around Boone Hall at about 9:30 or so, there was already about 100-150 faculty members hanging about with signs and the like– you know, the typical picket/protest.
• A lot of my colleagues from the English department were there, which I guess proves that people in English studies are “night people.”
• I actually thought there was a lot of “drama” out there tonight, but not a lot happened when you just boil it down to words– which again is why I hope folks take the time to listen to my podcast/audio file. But what it boiled down to for me is this: 10:00 PM hit and the administration walked away from the table. Simple as that. So one of my faculty colleagues who has remained nameless so far: it looks to me like you’re going to be picketing after all, right? : )
• I guess the administration had to walk out after this boneheaded threat. But at the same time, I guess I sort of assumed that they would keep talking if we were close to a deal, and, if it is indeed true that the administration was offering us 3% over 5 years, then we probably really were close to a deal. The whole thing seems so SO stupid to me. But it is so clear to me that if there was anyone out there who thought that the faculty were the ones at fault here, that feeling pretty much left as the administrators made their “perp walk” from Boone to Welch. It seems to me that the administration has set themselves up to look pretty freakin’ bad and give the faculty a reason to hold out as long as they possibly can now.
• And once again, thanks so much to the students who were out in support of the faculty cause. The new guy who is president of student council/senate was out there and told us that students are making signs that say “Student Support Faculty” (or something like that) and plan to be greeting John Fallon at his coffee and doughnuts sessions first thing tomorrow morning.
• Oh, and channel 4 had a decent enough coverage on the scene, and they tied it to the Detroit teachers walking out and closing down the public schools. I saw the report on the 11pm news, but I can’t find any links on their web site on it.

So, as I always say, we’ll see. I am TOTALLY convinced that if the administration were to come back to the table, we’d have a deal in a matter of a few hours. The real kicker is going to be is if the administration is willing to come back to the table that quickly. Given the “I’ll turn this car around” mode of threats, I’m predicting court action. And I am also predicting that this goes badly for the administration, quite frankly.