punditry.ca — uncovering DSU elections

Based on lessons from 2002 (see my earlier post), I do have a set of suggestions for students and their elected representatives. I also have a set of suggestions for what the DSU should not do. It’s not my place to advocate for any of these; rather, these are the things I wish I had known in February 2002.  I should note that I was very active during the strike, engaging in many conversations with the DFA and the students supporting them (my sent mail shows 800 emails that month).  I was engaged in the DSU discussions.  And today, I write as someone whose career path will lead him to be a member of a faculty union somewhere.  I see and recognize many perspectives; this is my conclusion based on all of them.

What should individuals do?

Hope for the best, plan for the worst. The posturing that’s happening now is very concerning. I do believe they are making more progress than they were in 2002, but they have yet to even start formally discussing what I see as the biggest issue.  I also suspect at least some of this is intended to bring pressure on the government to a) increase funding and b) relax pension solvency rules, which would require angry students and parents.  A strike may be averted, and if it comes it may be brief, but you never know. This whole post is written as a plan for the worst.

The university will do what it can to preserve the semester, and will go to some pretty extreme measures to do so. In 2002, the university pledged to compensate students for changed travel plan costs, help find alternate accommodations, and to do what they could to request leniency from employers [read the full memo here]. They also were good about giving tuition credits to students who withdrew during the strike. There is no guarantee that will happen again, so try these things at your own risk and remain as flexible as you can.

The extreme case involves a ruined summer with no refunds, like the oft-cited York University case (speaking as an employee of York University, these people are out of their minds). I wouldn’t be too worried about that happening at Dalhousie. Do consider your plans in the event of a lost semester, but don’t jump to react to it – warning employers, family, and friends not to expect you to graduate on time would be premature.

More after the break…

You’ll be angry and frustrated and will feel powerless; don’t find the first group promising action and jump into bed with them.  A lot of the actions taken during the strike aren’t helpful, and they aren’t as cathartic as you might hope.

You’ll be inclined to treat it as an extended school holiday.  Indeed, the strike is the best thing that could possibly happen for bars in Halifax.  That’s fine, for a time, but don’t forget the only person who loses from an academically easy semester is you.  If you leave town, you will have some small amount of notice to get back – once the negotiating teams establish a tentative agreement, it must be ratified by the Board and the DFA membership (actually the latter is more important to get back to class) which takes time.  Senate will also meet to establish a back-to-class protocol, I assume, but don’t count on any real delay there.  Trust me, you do NOT want to miss the first day back after the strike.  That’s an important day.

The level of dedication to the strike varies among the faculty.  In theory, they are to withdraw every aspect: no teaching, no admin duties, no research.  Some will certainly do this, and that’s fine.  Others would have a hard time not doing research and continue anyway.  Profs meeting with grad students in off-campus coffee shops has also been known to happen.  If you are a graduate student, make sure your professor knows how to reach you using non-Dal addresses, and vice versa.  Their level of involvement is up to them, respect their wishes, but enable communication if they wish.

Don’t be a dick to your profs.  I wouldn’t even ask how they voted.  They are part of a bargaining unit, they did what was right for their fellow members and for themselves, and ultimately followed the will of their unit.  The only way to get strike pay is to picket.  None of them will enjoy it.  Those who vote to strike will do so in the belief it is the only way to be treated fairly.  Respect that.

Find a source of information you trust. If you are pro-union or pro-admin, the sources are obvious. If you want a NPOV source, you’ll have to look harder. Hopefully you can turn to your elected student representatives…

What should elected student representatives do?

Your constituents will be angry and afraid and frustrated. Whether you’re the DSU president or the second year representative on a department society, I think you have two primary roles: inform and protect, but there’s other things you can do as well.

• Inform: Clear, un-nuanced information is what students craved in 2002, and it was hard to find. Get access to a departmental mailing list right now. Create an opt-in mailing list for more frequent updates and publicize it. Polish up your website and provide links to sources of information. With everything we did in CS in 2002, by far the task for which we received the most appreciation was keeping students informed.  Ordinarily one would ask student media to supply this perspective, but based on reading the Gazette so far, it mostly seems fairly pro-DFA and I would characterize the actual facts reported as “somewhat loose”.  Its understandable to not want to delve too deeply into the pension solvency issue, but the high-level summaries so far haven’t been entirely accurate.
• Protect: Your students may also require protection; for example, during the strike one prof emailed students telling them that assignments 4 and 5 would be due the day classes resumed. This type of thing was later banned by the Senate, but we were able to quietly deal with it before it ever reached the point of appeal.

• At the DSU level, one of the most useful things in 2002 was forming a Media Relations committee that produced a summary of the actual issues. They should have done it a month before the strike; learn from that example.
• Be vocal about how this strike is bad for students. Regardless of the cause and whose fault it is, students paid for instruction and aren’t getting it. They are an innocent party; whether you believe that the Administration is victimizing them or the DFA is using them as pawns, it’s bad for students. Don’t wing it: the media will be clamoring for interviews. Develop a strategy and implement it.
• Identify specific issues that can be lobbied on for students. For example, standard residence procedure requires students to leave shortly after their exams. You could lobby right now to change this to allow students to stay until April 30th no matter what, which would allow students to make travel plans that are less likely to require changes in the event of a strike.  That’s just a random example, it might not even work, I’m sure you can do better.
• Form a plan for back-to-class on the first day of the strike. Update it as the strike progresses. Go into the Senate meeting after the strike with a plan that’s good for students. They’ll pass it, I assure you.
• There is actually an opportunity here: all Dal students will be impacted. This is an opportune moment for the DSU to be strong and useful and relevant to all students. In 2002, the level of disgust was palpable when I released the news that the DSU had finally passed a motion regarding their stance on the strike, after a week of fighting about it. Try not to focus resources on the inevitable fight about the DSU’s position: that doesn’t help students.
• For the next few weeks, the administration may be more willing than usual to accommodate requests on issues not related to the strike or tuition. If you have any, roll them out.

What The DSU Should NOT Do

1. Don’t take sides. The DFA is writing open letters to students asking for support, and NSPIRG is organizing events in solidarity with faculty, and even the Gazette is calling on students to pressure the Administration on behalf of faculty. While I have no objection whatsoever to individuals doing so, it’s different when you consider our union doing it on behalf of all students. Don’t do it.  More below.

2. Don’t be fooled by “neutral” positions that aren’t. Even though everyone in the room in 2002, including the student supporters of the DFA, agreed that the motion we passed spoke to issues relevant to students but otherwise was neutral, it wasn’t. The BoG, the DFA, and the media all interpreted the stand as solidarity with the DFA. Even the supporters on Council who were in the room for the debate and helped draft the “neutral” motion were saying this:

FYI, here’s how the DSU is presenting its new and improved position. Not
too shabby…

We still have a long way to go, of course, but I think we all deserve a huge
pat on the collective back for successfully lobbying the DSU to take this
stand. It’s certainly conceivable that they’d still be holding the
‘neutral’ line if we all weren’t such effective gadflies.

3. Don’t confuse the difference between “the DFA” and “the faculty members” you know and like. Individual faculty members are by and large good people, who care about education and students and who sincerely feel that strikes are terrible for students but are a necessity in order to be treated fairly. (This may be why the DFA has had 75% and 80% support for strikes in the past, compared to the 95-100% you tend to see when the negotiating team recommends a strike to other unions). The DFA as an organization is required to consider what is best for its members. They aren’t a nefarious and evil organization, but they are focused on their priorities, as they should be. But – for example – just because individual faculty members want students to pay lower tuition to reduce barriers to education, it doesn’t mean that the DFA will share that goal when the financial interests of its own members are in conflict.

4. Don’t accept the press releases of either party as being the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  They aren’t.  You also tend to interact with the administration more than the DFA, and they have access to your email: actively seek out different perspectives.

A little help for my friends

To help you resist the call to take a side, here are some of the usual reasons trotted out to justify DSU support, and why I think they are bunk. The only arguments I’ve really hard are for taking the DFA side and for not taking sides; since I agree with the latter point, these point-counterpoints will focus on arguments for taking the DFA side.  The argument against taking a side really boils down to “it’s not what the DSU is there for; there are other things the DSU should be focused on instead”).

Union solidarity!
First, the DSU isn’t a union in the usual sense of the term. It’s more of a mildly-influential consumers association in this context.

Second, the word “solidarity” means support due to “common responsibilities and interests”. The DSU and the DFA are in an odd place, where the DSU’s members are responsible for paying over one-third of the DFA members’ salaries, and the DSU has limited bargaining power. Short of increased funding from the province, tuition and cuts will be the only way to get money required to meet any increase. While at an individual level students may want faculty to be fairly compensated, as a bargaining unit this is a detrimental position. It would be bizarre to ask the university to lower tuition, while simultaneously asking them to increase expenditures. The area where there is common cause is asking the province to increase university funding, and by all means on that issue stand in solidarity. But when dealing with the administration, it’s just not the same.

Third, in practice “union solidarity” ends up meaning unions stand together because unions are always right, regardless of any facts or evidence. I oppose this blind instinct on principle.

Fourth, the DFA hasn’t been following the golden rule. In 2002 there was lots of talk about how the DFA could support student lobbying efforts. That would be awesome. On an individual level, the faculty support students on principle, but at the association level, where has the DFA been? Since 2001, the salary range for DFA members has gone from $39,000-$108,000 to $65,000-$158,000. That’s an increase of 65% at the low end and 46% at the high end. (And, from my personal perspective, faculty should be paid even more than that. But I digress.) Student tuition has gone up by about 41% in the same time period (for a Canadian Arts student… if you are in a professional program or an international student, it’s worse). The DFA hasn’t exactly been burning the midnight oil lobbying the administration on lowering tuition, and I daresay it isn’t on the bargaining table. And I don’t fault them for this: it wouldn’t help their members, so why would they? I wouldn’t, if I were them. But by the same token, they certainly can’t expect the DSU to set aside its own lobbying efforts to take up their cause with the Administration. (And I suspect they don’t expect this – it will be a handful of students pushing this point.)

They are fighting for quality of education! We must support this fight.
This looks like a common cause; in general, happy and well-compensated faculty are good for quality of education. And some issues – like faculty complement in 2002 – do have an immediate impact on quality of education. But please be assured that the DFA is negotiating for quality of education if and only if it benefits its members, as they should. The times when quality of education is good for students are somewhat more universal. For instance, the DFA has in the past opposed student ratings of professors. If a professor is denied tenure because they are a crappy instructor who views teaching as a chore deserving no attention, the DFA will fight for this professor. And they should, it’s their job. I don’t fault them for this.  But don’t confuse their interests as being completely aligned with quality of education.  And the key issue not yet negotiated – how to resolve the looming pension crisis – comes down to money, not quality of education.  While the individual faculty being better paid is good for quality of education, the administration having a less-tight budget is also good for quality of education.

Faculty care about students, we should care about them!
Please remember to distinguish between the DFA and individual faculty, and the DSU and individual students. As individual faculty, professors are great. If individual students want to march the picket lines with them, go to town. At the association level, continue to advocate for your own members.

We have to DO SOMETHING
Sure, but there are much better things you can do with your time (see above) than spend a week arguing over positions and wording.  The costs of taking a position – both in actual cost and in opportunity costs – far outweigh even the promised benefits, let alone the actual benefits.

Something else, so the post doesn’t end on that note

A strike, should it come, will suck.  You’ll be flooded by a deluge of conflicting information (this is already starting at a staggering volume compared to 2002).  The nature of the negotiations means sometimes you won’t know the future more than one or two days ahead (actually, this is true the moment the DFA can legally go on strike, whether they do or not).  This entire giant wall of text boils down to Keep Calm and Carry On.  Good luck.