This looks like it's going to
be a busy year for activists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and other
campuses across the country, writes Molly Mapstone.
August 31, 2017
Graduate workers rally for a
fair contract at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (TAA - Graduate Worker
Union of UW-Madison | Facebook)
AS STUDENTS and faculty arrive
on campuses in the coming days and weeks, they will face increased austerity,
as university administrations prioritize profit over education, and corporate
interests over the people who learn and work there.
At the University of Wisconsin
(UW)-Madison, there are several important and diverse struggles on the horizon
that will shape how we take on the neoliberal university and how we build the
solidarity we need among students, faculty and campus workers.
Members of the Teaching
Assistants' Association (TAA), which represents graduate student employees, are
in a fight for the life of their union, as the administration seeks
to gut their ability to organize their co-workers.
Last semester, the university
police pulled
a Black student from a Black Visual Culture class and arrested him, for
allegedly painting anti-racist graffiti in response to racism on campus.
Sexual assaults are on the
rise at UW, with no clear plan from the university to take action. State
legislators threaten the accreditation of the medical school with no push back
from the university administration.
New legislation could also
make it possible for guns to be carried on campus. The university currently
buys goods made by prison labor. Money is being drained from actual education
to feed a
bloated administration and athletics department.
The list goes on and on, which
is why this will be a crucial year for organizing on campus.
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IT'S CLEAR that one goal of
the UW administration is
busting the TAA union.
When Act 10, the
Republican-sponsored bill that gutted collective bargaining in Wisconsin, went
into effect in 2011, the TAA was immediately impacted--meaning that its legal
recognition as a bargaining agent for graduate students was rendered null and
void.
The university doesn't
recognize the TAA--the oldest graduate student union in the country which has
been organizing for more than 50 years in response to unfair wages and working
conditions--as a union. On top of that, the administration is opposed to the
organization of graduate students in any capacity, which places graduate
students in a vulnerable position.
With graduate students doing
60 percent of face-to-face instruction at UW-Madison, their labor is necessary
for the operation of the university. Since the passage of Act 10 as well as a
"right-to-work" measure in 2015, the rights of public-sector unions
and the TAA have been severely threatened.
Right-to-work laws damage
unions by eliminating mandatory union dues for collective bargaining by a
democratically elected union. By making dues optional, financially strapped
unions are much more likely to crumble under pressure from bosses and systems
looking for ways to bust them anyway.
The university administration
has threatened to reduce graduate student workers' rights to a handbook instead
of a binding contract. Should the university succeed in crushing the rights of
graduate student workers, the rest of the university will feel the effects. The
quality of education received by undergraduate students--and the quality of
work and research done by the graduate student workers--will suffer.
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UW-MADISON students also face
considerable threats to their own safety from the people that claim to protect
them--namely the university police. This spring, after a Black student
allegedly wrote anti-racist graffiti on several buildings on campus, the
university responded to this nonviolent crime by sending university police
to his classroom, with bullet-proof vests and guns visible to all, and pull the
student from the class, causing
a major disruption.
"The university is more
interested in protecting the symbols of UW as a progressive institution, like
their buildings and Bucky [UW's mascot], rather than the students who are
actually fighting for social change, and apparently their live," states
Johanna Almiron, the Afro-American Studies professor whose class was
interrupted, in a letter circulated among students and faculty after the
incident.
At the same time, the
university has had a weak response to the rise in reports of sexual assault on
campus, including the case of Alec Cook, an undergraduate student accused of
assaulting 11 women over several years. The university police were reportedly
aware of his activities long before finally intervening, and it wasn't their
investigation that led to his arrest, but rather a series of brave young women who
spoke out on social media.
To state it plainly, the UW
police will go out of their way to arrest a street artist, but will remain
silent when women's lives are at stake.
The campus newspaper, The
Daily Cardinal, reports
a serious rise in the amount of sexual assault reports at UW-Madison--325
reports in 2016, up from 217 reports in 2015. Of all these cases in 2016, two
students found guilty were placed on probation, three resulted in suspension,
and one expelled.
Like many universities in the
U.S., UW-Madison is deliberately minimizing the scale of sexual assault on
campus to uphold the reputation of the institution, rather than defend the
safety of its students. Given the case of Alec Cook, the policies regarding punishment
and investigation of sexual assault cases aren't sufficient for the scope of
the issue which greatly threatens the safety of women on campus.
Other pressing issues at
UW-Madison include: the university using prison
labor to produce goods for the university, major
cuts to departments specifically under fire from the Trump administration,
a bill threatening accreditation of the university
OB/GYN program, bloated
administration salaries. On top of that, Chancellor Rebecca Blank's pick
for "Go Big Read," a book that is given to all new students and
offered to everyone who wants a copy, this year is Hillbilly Elegy, which
supports the fallacy that poor people are individually responsible for their
situation and poverty.
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THE ISSUES facing students and
faculty of UW Madison aren't unique. Consider demonstrations at Syracuse
University that defended
the right to take part in political activism on campus, or the
administration's union-busting
tactics at the New School in New York, or the prevalence of
sexual assault on campuses across the U.S.
The recent success of Students
for Justice in Palestine who passed a resolution calling on UW-Madison to divest
from Israeli companies demonstrates the power students have to put pressure
on their administration. This is especially true at UW-Madison, where shared governance is law. While the
agreement that was reached concerning divestment wasn't as radical as the
original proposal, pressure from below is what caused the university to give
way to student demands.
Graduate students are also
hard at work fighting for rights to mandatory communication on policy change,
clearly defined job titles and other issues key to graduate student workers.
UW-Madison students have also successfully held several
demonstrations to demand that university administration take sexual assault
reports seriously, and actively work against the prevailing issue.
These are just examples of
struggles that took place in the past two years, and mostly on a single campus.
This year, we look poised for a full year of more struggles.
What we do on our campuses
matters. What's happening to our universities isn't normal, and it isn't right.
We deserve better, not just as students but also as human beings. If we're
fighting for a better world, a good place to start is on our campuses. This
year, we also have an opportunity to link together our different struggles,
build solidarity and bring together the forces we will need to fight for the
colleges and universities we deserve.
Join the socialists if you
wish to fight this battle from all fronts and intersections. And get ready for
the fight of your life.
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