Unpopular Dissent

This post is my response to this article:

CBC: Ontario to legislate end to York University strike

If the Ontario legislature decides to send the contract academics and graduate students back to work, it directly contradicts the interests the interests of those individuals while simultaneously siding with the oppressive university institution.

Here is the response I posted to the article on the CBC website:

As an undergraduate student at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where the faculty has bargained away its ability to strike, I implore the contract academics and graduate students of York University to continue their strike, illegally if need be.

This is not just a matter of rational self interest, but a principal of respect for those important members of the academic community who are so often taken advantage of. Contract academics lack job security, research grants, and the prestige associated with tenured professors. Graduate students rely on the University institution for research time and space, and as such their expertise is exploited and viewed as less valuable. Their wages often barely provide them with enough money to make it through the month.

If it is decided by the Ontario legislature to force the contract academics and graduate students back to work, this action is in direct opposition to the respect and attention these valuable members of the academic community deserve. This strike is about more than just material desires; it is about the social principals that treat these individuals as unimportant to the functioning of the institution. The legal status of the strike is important to the extent that those on strike continue to be viewed with respect by the external citizens of Ontario. If the strike is pronounced illegal, this is a further sign of disrespect to the contract academics and graduate students of York University.

Futher, it is already evident that this strike is only being portrayed as harmful to the students. Aside from their monetary investments, if the students actually gave a flying fuck about the quality of their education, they would join the graduate students and contract academics in striking. At the University of Alberta, greater than 50% of all teaching is done by contract academics and graduate students who designate much their time to educating rather than research. Who in university hasn’t had a tenure-tracked professor who didn’t give a shit about teaching, and only cared about their research interests?

If undergraduate education is important at all to York University (which I’m willing to bet it isn’t: undergraduate education is only valuable to corporate universities for the tuition fees it gains), the strike would have been settled long ago. Contract academics and graduate students alike would have come out of the fray with their dignity and respect intact, as well as a coinciding increase in salary as a symbol of that respect.