Steven D. Krause

-14.5 or -16 pounds or so

I think there are two things that have put me back on track in terms of the diet. First, school has started, and I have found myself at work without time or even interest in eating. In other words, there’s no “I have nothing else to do– I think I’ll eat something” kind of eating. Second, I’ve been able to get to the gym again pretty regularly.

Still, I might need to get a new scale. It has always been somewhat suspect because moving it around a bit or stepping on it at a slightly different angle can change things by a pound or more. But it seems to be doing that more lately. And besides that, going back to the gym again makes me wonder about the accuracy of it. They have one of those “doctor office” kinds of scales in the locker room. The last time I got on it, I was at about -16. That’s 2 pounds less than I was on the scale at home, and that’s in my gym clothes and after a light breakfast.

I know, I know, we’re only talking about a pound or two. But hey, a pound or two is all I’m losing each week on this diet, so I’ll take all of ’em.

There’s been a couple of interesting things on some of the blogs I frequent about teaching in community colleges. There’s this post and this post from John “A Writing Teacher’s Blog” Lovas. John has a certain “street cred” here because he teaches in a community college and he has a long-standing scholarly record in the comp/rhet community. Then there’s this smart post from Jeff Rice, and also this smart post from Derek “Earth Wide Moth” Mueller. Derek wasn’t talking about community college stuff originally, but it went that way in the comments.

This talk about the difference (if there is one) between writing pedagogy in four year colleges and universities versus community colleges comes at an interesting time for me because my colleagues and I have been talking casually about how our MA program has been changing and how we might need to change, too. It used to be that about 70% or so of the students enrolled in our “Teaching of Writing” program were practicing junior high and high school teachers. I don’t know what the numbers are now, but there are significantly fewer of these secondary teachers now then there used to be. Conversely, we have a lot more students who are interested in pursuing PhDs in composition and rhetoric and/or who are interested in teaching at community colleges.

So maybe what we need to do in our program is to figure out a way to address some of the issues of teaching in community colleges. We have a “topics in” series of courses, and I was kind of thinking that a “topics in teaching in the community college” might be interesting. Of course, one of the problems (besides the fact that, as the above links suggest, it is debatable if there really are a lot of differences in writing pedagogy in universities and community colleges) is that all of the folks who might teach a class like that have little or no experience in actually working in community colleges. That’s not to say we can’t learn, but it isn’t something we can do on the fly, either.

I have more than enough on my plate right now, but I think it’d be an interesting class to explore and research. We’ll see….

I don’t think this is exactly the “end” of faculty strike news because the union leadership has still not informed members any of the details of the deal and faculty have to vote on it. But practically speaking, it appears that the strike is settled and everything is back to normal around here. There are a few rumors worth noting. I’ve heard from reliable sources that faculty are going to get an “across the board” raise of over 3% for each of the two years of the contract and the interim president has promised to hire 25 or so faculty above and beyond the 47 the administration was trying to search this year as the result of a retirement buy-out plan.

I don’t know who “blinked” first in these negotiations, but I have to think it was the administration. After all, faculty were getting ready to go onto the picket lines Wednesday morning. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of being on strike, but I was certainly prepared and assuming that I wasn’t going to be teaching the first week or so of classes. There was a fair amount of area TV and other media coverage of the whole thing, and given the oodles of bad press the administration had already had to endure over the last year or so, I have to think that they didn’t want to create the photo op of faculty picketing in front of the “University House.”

I’m glad we settled, but damn, that would have been some rally….

I went for a haircut at my usual place in the Arcade in downtown Ann Arbor just now, and while the cut was fine and I happily didn’t have to wait at all, the woman cutting my hair had on some religious TV show on. The preacher, who was also a woman, was speaking about ways we all have to fight the devil in our minds by citing passages from the Bible. Pretty kooky stuff, if you ask me.

I thought about getting her to change the channel, but I decided against it. For one thing, it would have been kind of rude. For another, she might have used that as an opportunity/excuse to really screw up the haircut.

Anyway, simply yet another example of how hard it is for me to find a good place to get a haircut, I guess. Over the last fifteen or so years, I can think of three people who I thought did a really good job. One was this kind of punk woman in Richmond. She worked at this funky place in the Oregon Hill neighborhood. I assume I was the only client she had who had a “normal” hairstyle. Then, when Annette and I were grad school in Bowling Green, we used to get our hair cut by this quasi-closeted man named Bob. He did a great job and was dirt-cheap, too. The two things about him were you had to schedule an appointment like a month in advance because he was so busy– I’d usually just set an appointment right after I got done. The other thing was he cut my hair REALLY fast, I mean unnervingly fast. I was usually in and out of there in 10 minutes.

I haven’t found anyone as good in the AA-Ypsi area. Maybe I’ll just start going to that place in the mall…

I (along with everyone else) got an email at 7:28 this morning that said that the union reached a tentative agreement and we’re not on strike anymore. Good news for now; more news later.

Well, as of 12:07, the faculty are on strike. Now, the last update via email and on their web site was at about 1:30 in the morning, so I suppose the situation could change yet today. But WEMU just now said faculty are indeed still on strike.

Two thoughts:

* Oddly enough, I’m playing golf this morning. The main reason for this is I wouldn’t be teaching this Wednesday anyway, and we were told at the union meeting yesterday that we should show up to picket when we would teach and hold office hours. The only tricky thing is I had a meeting scheduled this afternoon, and I might not know the news about a settlement when it happens if I’m on the course.

* At one of the many meeting this past week, our chief negotiator would say that going on strike would represent a “failure” on everyone’s part, including ours. I wonder if she still feels that way.

I’ve been riding my bike to school lately (and I will be until the weather gets nasty) because there’s been a lot of road construction around campus, it’s impossible to park at the beginning of the semester, and– oh yeah– I live less than a mile and a half from my office. Anyway, I rode in today for an afternoon EMU-AAUP “Support Rally,” and I was struck by what a great day it was for a protest, perfectly sunny, a light breeze, that mix between summer and fall. Really, a beautiful day.

The rally was good too– not really “beautiful,” but a good showing of around 300 or so faculty. Pretty well organized and a good “photo-op” for the media. I stood there with my sign, half-listening to the speeches (it was hard to hear) and mingling with colleagues, using the sign to shade the sun. Standing by Welch Hall, which is the administrative building, were some “suits” keeping an eye on things. Kinda interesting.

After an afternoon that actually involved doing some work, I went to yet another union meeting so we could take a vote to authorize a strike. We rehashed the issues, found out what had changed or not changed, etc., and after some other discussion (which I’ll get to in a bit), we voted to strike. And the weather was still really nice when I rode home.

A few thoughts on all of this (and a few other things beyond the meetings):

* My gut feeling, even after the vote to authorize a strike, is that the bargaining team is going to get a deal. I don’t know, maybe that is being overly optimistic, but it just seems to me that the faculty and the administration are actually pretty close. I mean, we might technically be on strike for a while this evening, when the contract ends at midnight, but I still think this is ultimately going to work out.

* The issues? Pretty much the same: hiring back more faculty, money, and continuing education. Insurance used to be a problem, but the administration backed down on forcing faculty into one plan. The continuing education is a relatively minor one to be honest, so I expect that one to drop away soon.

So, we’re left with hiring back faculty and money. Now, money-wise, the administration was offering a 2.6-2.3% raise for 2 years (I might have those numbers mixed up), and we were asking for 3.75% or so. Even the chief negotiator for the union doesn’t think we’re going to get 3.75% (at least that’s what the Ann Arbor News reported), so we’re probably talking about a 3% across the board raise for two years. That seems pretty straight-forward to me.

Faculty-wise, it’s a little more complicated. Basically, since the previous and infamous president was hired, EMU has hired a lot more administrators and non-tenure-track sorts of teachers (part-time and full-time lecturers), and we’ve hired a lot fewer faculty. At the meeting today, it sounds like we are getting somewhere with language where the administration commits to hiring a lot more faculty, but at the same time, the administration doesn’t really want to write this into the contract forever.

* One of the things I’m concerned about here are our priorities. The bargaining team says that the most important issue is hiring back more faculty, but what I’m worried about is the administration will offer us a 3% pay raise, do nothing about hiring back more faculty, and that’s the deal we’ll take. Personally, I think that’s kind of backwards.

* The controversy at the strike meeting– if it could really be called a “controversy”– was over how it was we were going to vote for a strike, with a paper ballot or a voice vote. I supported a paper and secret ballot and had big problems with a voice vote, basically because I thought this was too important to be one big “rah-rah” yell of yes.

Personally, I registered my vote to strike as “abstain.” I didn’t want to put my voice to a yes or a no, and I also don’t really know exactly how I feel about it all. Yeah, there are some issues left on the table, but going on strike is no fun, and if there isn’t much on the table, well…

* I do know this: I don’t know if we’re going on strike or not, but if the bargaining unit does call a strike, the administration is kidding themselves if they think that we’re either bluffing or if faculty split over this. Take me, for example: as unenthusiastic as I am about striking, there is no freakin’ way I’d cross a picket line. My guess is that this is true for about 630 or so of my colleagues.

Oh well. I’ll know by tomorrow morning. I just saw EMU’s “PR Tool” Pam Young on one of the channels out of Detroit, and I have to say that if this is the language that they want to use about what the faculty is doing, I suspect we might be starting classes a couple days late this year…

* On Sunday, Will somewhat unexpectedly said he wanted to get the training wheels off of his bike and to try to learn to ride it two-wheeled style. He may have been motivated to do this by a friend who is one year younger and who has matered the two-wheeled approach. Will, like his father, is a bit of a chicken, too afraid of pain and/or falling, so there was a lot of “don’t let go! don’t let go!” kind of crying. He was going to give up almost right away, but I promised a Dairy Queen trip if he was willing to keep it up for a while. We made some progress, though we will be working on this for a bit longer.

* Will and I both continue to enjoy the new PlayStation2. He seems stuck on a particular level of his Harry Potter game, though.

* Today is Will’s first day of school– second grade. Annette and I will be taking him in today so we get a chance to meet his new teacher and all that. I am planning on going to the gym right after words, so I’m going to be meeting this person looking pretty scruffy and smelling somewhat questionable. This look this morning will only be heightened by the fact that I haven’t shaved in a couple days and I very much need a haircut. Oh well; at least Annette will look like a grown-up.

I’m up far too late, antsy and not able to get to sleep, I suppose because of “current event” issues around here. First off, I went to yet another union meeting today about the contract negotiations. You can read about some of it at the EMU-AAUP web site, and also at this EMU web site page about the union. Funny– there’s a link to EMU on the union web site, but not a link to the union on the EMU web site.

Anyway, a lot what happen is a really a rehashing of this postand this post. The issue of insurance has been resolved in the union’s favor, and it looks to me like the union and the administration are moving closer together in terms of salary stuff. The only thing that might be a bit more dicey is getting language in the contract about hiring back more faculty. They may very well be talking about that as I type.

Second off, school hasn’t started (it does on Wednesday– assuming we get a contract, of course) and I already have this very odd feeling of already being behind. Logically, I know that isn’t true. In fact, I actually got a revision of the essay I was working on off for further review this weekend, all of my classes are ready to go for the first day (well, as ready as I can be at this stage), etc., etc. But I guess because of both distractions from the union (the meeting today, there’s a rally tomorrow, there’s yet another meeting tomorrow night, etc.) and the act of getting some of this work done has left me feeling behind, perhaps more with things around the house than with school.

In any event, two thoughts I had about the whole union thing. First off– and this is for any of you EMU people out there who might come across this post– don’t confuse my own discomfort with the simplistic discursive style the union has been taking in these negotiations and my less than enthusiastic stand on a faculty strike with not being supportive of the union or willing to honor a picket line. I’ve offered dissenting opinions about what the union is negotiating because it’s part of the democratic process. When we all start parroting the “party line” for the sake of solidarity, that’s when we get in trouble. That’s when we go on strike for no good reason.

Second, I realized today that a lot of how people feel about the contract negotiations seem to me related to how well they think they are being paid, relatively speaking. Maybe this is too obvious, but let me try to explain what I mean a bit. While average salaries at EMU are low across the board, the thing that really brings us down as an institution is the pay being received by associate and full professors. We’ve being hiring assistants at relatively competitive rates, but, because of that old salary monster called “compression,” the folks who’ve been here the longest are falling the farthest behind.

I suppose the other factor here is that the people who have been here the longest are perhaps the most “out of touch” for what the going rate is for a professor at a particular rank. I don’t know that, just a guess.

I don’t really have a solution to this problem, other than to say that the only way the senior faculty are ever going to get caught up is if we move away from this 2 or 3 or 4 percent “across the board” model of pay raises to some system where folks who are further behind get a bigger raise than folks who are being paid about right. There is currently a tiny TINY pool of money to do this, but it needs to be a lot bigger, I think. But this would be complicated, it would create a bit of a “have and have not” system, and I don’t expect to see this kind of change anytime soon.

It’s been a while (relatively speaking) since I’ve posted anything particularly interesting to the “life blog,” and since one of my regular readers (I’ve got a million of them, of course) sent me an email to ask what’s new, I thought I’d write this “combo” post.

Adventures in dieting: It’s going pretty good since I’m back to going ot the gym as often as possible and we’re trying to eat right again. I think I picked up a pound the other day, but I was down -14.5 the other day. I’m not going to make my -16 or -18 or so pound goal by the time classes start, but I feel like I’m heading in the right direction. However…

Ow! I’ve done something to my back that is hurting me imensely. I realize that lower-back pain isn’t exactly an unusual condition, but I rarely have problems and I can’t remember ever being in the sort of pain I’m in now. Asprin helps, the heatpad helps, and walking around helps. But it had better go away pretty soon or I’m going to have to see Annette’s chiropractor.

Happy Birthday, Will! Will’s actual birthday is coming up next week, but we had his birthday party last week before school started for everyone. I put up this little web site with some of the picture highlights.

PlayStation Mania: Will’s big present this year was a PlayStation2– a lot of gift, for sure, though it also is something that I’ve managed to play with a bit too. So far, I’ve been fascinated by this driving game, and I think one of the games that Will is getting from his grandparents includes a basketball game of some sort. I’m not real crazy about the “first person shooter” games, but who knows, I might get one of those one day, too.