All Posts Tagged With: "administration"
Help! My prof is on strike!
Should students be scared when faculty threaten to walk out?
Labour unrest at Western and Carleton have, no doubt, students there worried. And as the academic year rolls on, more faculty associations across the country may reach tense periods in their bargaining processes. Could my school be next? But since students are not always familiar with the mechanics of such negotiations, the uncertainty can be unnerving. What follows is a brief outline of what goes on to help students feel a bit less uncertain.
At nearly every university in Canada, professors and other academics are members of a local faculty association, and in most cases those associations are legally unions according to provincial labour laws. For professors, most of those locals are part of a national union, The Canadian Association of University Teachers.
Faculty associations negotiate collective agreements with their university administrations and those agreements govern much of the academic workings of the university. Students may not be aware of it, but everyday things like the numbers of students in their classes may, in fact, be determined by the university’s contract with its faculty.
These contracts are made only for a few years at a time since neither side wants to be bound to one set of rules for too long — new problems may arise, after all. So, around the time the old agreement is set to run out, the two sides meet to try to negotiate a new deal. Often the changes are minor, but there are usually important things that both sides want to alter. Salaries, for example, are almost always on the table, but, as the recent disputes at Western and Carleton show, things like tenure and promotion can take centre stage.
Sometimes both sides agree within a few months to new terms and a contract is signed without much conflict. Just as often, though, negotiations drag on, impasses are reached, and things get tense. At some point, the faculty association’s executive may call a vote asking members to authorize a strike should they deem one necessary. Students should be aware that calling a vote for a strike mandate like this is very common in such negotiations and is nothing to be alarmed about. A strike vote is not a decision to strike; it’s only an authorization to call a strike if necessary. In fact, the strike vote may actually help resolve the problems because it shows the administration that faculty are serious.
When the vote is called, faculty association members typically vote in favour of a strike because if they vote against it, their bargainers lose almost all their power: they have to show the administration that, at the end of the day, they are willing to walk. That is the only real power faculty associations have.
If no agreement can be reached — and pending a variety of mediations that may be mandated by provinical laws — faculty may strike. They leave the university, cease their teaching and typically set up picket lines on campus. Depending on the particulars, the university itself may remain open so that students can go to the library, work in computer labs and so on, but those details will vary from one university to the next. Check the web sites of the university and of the faculty association itself to get information about your case.
If they do feel the need to walk out, associations typically try to arrange strikes for a time that will cause maximum disruption to the university’s operations so that the administration has plenty of motivation to make a deal. Faculty generally do not strike in the summer because the university can simply let them stay away without losing much revenue or causing a public uproar. Consequently, many associations try to time their job actions for the middle of the term to create fear that exams and courses might be in jeopardy if the situation is not resolved.
Does this sound like students are being used? They are. Associations want students and parents and members of the community to rally together and say “get those profs back to work for our kids’ sake!” which pressures the university to cave in to faculty demands.
At the same time, what is good for faculty is often good for students in the long run. If faculty win higher salaries at the bargaining table, it may mean recruiting better profs in the future. If they get better rules for academic freedom, it may mean better teaching because instructors are not worried about what they can and cannot say. If they get smaller class sizes, you may get more personal attention in your next course.
The good news is that for all the anxiety, faculty strikes are not usually very long (typically weeks, not months). So far as I know, no Canadian university has ever lost a term or semester due to a strike. So if there is a talk of a strike where you go to school, don’t panic. The strike is not likely to happen. If it does, it likely won’t be long, and by the time there is another one, you will have graduated and moved on.
Does your tummy hurt?
Gastrointeritis: symptoms may include a drastic lack of preparation for exams.
When a student goes to the doctor and complains of vomiting and stomach pains with no specific cause there’s a catch-all term that readily applies. Doctors call it gastrointeritis, a diagnosis that’s familiar to professors and instructors everywhere. So the doctor scribbles this word on a medical form of some description or other, and just like that the student has his or her “get out of exam free” card.
Students do occasionally become ill. And sometimes illness is badly timed and affects exams, midterms, and assorted deadlines. But this whole regime of medical notes is absurd and hypocritical and what’s more everyone knows it. The students who make a habit of such things know darn well they can get a note based on non-specific symptoms (i.e. “my tummy hurts”) any time they like. They even know which clinics to go to and how much they’ll charge. The doctors aren’t remotely qualified to evaluate any student’s ability to write an exam or complete an assignment while ill and still they’ll produce a note on the subject. And the administrators who require this exercise and the professors who receive the notes understand that 90 per cent or more of the claims are bogus, yet we continue to play the game by the agreed upon rules.
Again, the major problem here is the mistaken belief that doctors are qualified to judge whether or not a student is healthy enough to sit an exam. They are not. They receive no such training and any doctor will freely admit as much. When I was involved in Workplace Safety and Insurance work I had the opportunity to review a variety of documentation relating to injured workers and their ability to perform various tasks and jobs. Doctors who do this stuff for real are highly specialized and they spend a lot of time evaluating their patients before making a report. Even then their work is subject to doubt and controversy. It’s very subjective. So there is no way a family doctor, on the basis of a ten minute discussion, can genuinely report on a student’s ability to get his or her school work done. The diagnosis of gastrointeritis is nothing more than a repetition of the student’s claim about vomiting and stomach pain. There’s no possible test to verify these symptoms.
None of this is meant to suggest that I’m out to punish the poor “sick” students. Common wisdom accepts that students don’t really benefit from blowing off tests, from pushing deadlines, and from deferring exams. They get some relief in the short term, yes, but they only delay their problems. They do make more work for their instructors and that is kind of annoying at times. But they aren’t “cheating” in the sense that they gain anything. So the obvious solution is just to take students at their word and accept the stupid forms. I find myself doing it just as so many instructors have done so before. But it’s still a ridiculous exercise.
A very wise administrator once pointed out to me how truly stupid this all is by making this observation. The students who are genuinely sick don’t benefit significantly from seeing a doctor. The treatment for vomiting, stomach pains, and general flu-like symptoms (in other words, actual gastrointeritis) is just bed rest and fluids. Dragging yourself to a walk-in clinic and sitting around for a couple hours waiting for a note is just about the worst thing you can do. And on top of that, we’re just wasting doctors’ very valuable time with this pointless crap, by turning them into gatekeepers for an academic regime that needs to maintain the illusion of scrutiny. Surely their time could be better spent treating people who are actually ill.
For some this may come as news. If you never realized before how easy it is to get a doctor’s note, well, now you know. But it still isn’t in your interests to do it, so I wouldn’t recommend suddenly becoming “ill” the next time there’s a test. And for those who knew this already, you might as well be aware that we know it too. We know which doctors and clinics you are going to and we know exactly what you’re saying to them and we know how empty the process really is. We just don’t know what to do about it–aside from ensuring that the make up tests are harder than the originals and that no one (including the genuinely ill) ever derives any advantage from the process.
Sometimes, the system just doesn’t work very well for anyone. It makes my tummy hurt.
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Questions are welcome at jeff.rybak@utoronto.ca. Even the ones I don’t post will still receive answers, and where I do use them here I’ll remove identifying information.
Is your university anti-democratic?
And what would it mean to say “yes,” anyway?
Twitter is proving to be an interesting conversation starter. And yes, I’m still promoting that (follow me, dammit) but it sure isn’t a conversation finisher. With only 140 characters per tweet, it’s rather hard to have an involved conversation. Though seriously, for those who lack restraint, it can be a fascinating exercise in concision. If anyone is really interested, the other side of the conversation is represented here.
My goal, in elaborating on my point, is not to flog the CFS for their policies or practices. I’m sure, in the wake of this meeting, there will plenty of criticism on that point. But I wasn’t there and the CFS isn’t my particular beat. My interest in this story is to answer the oft-repeated claim that campus and outside media have a particular hate-on for the CFS while ignoring similar problems in university administration.
My answer is simply this. The correlation between how an organization like the CFS should run and how a university administration should run is so thin that it might as well not exist. About the only thing they have in common are students. One is a voluntary organization (though there will be opinions about that shortly) devoted to lobbying and advocacy. The CFS is ostensibly member-based, with a democratic mandate, and designed to represent students. The other is a semi-private/public institution (universities are odd beasts in this sense) devoted to the delivery of education. Universities are in no sense democratic nor were they ever designed to be. They make efforts to meaningfully engage with stakeholders, yes, and this includes students. These efforts may be more or less successful and may be more or less sincere. But they shouldn’t be confused with democracy.
In an idealistic sense I think we can all agree it would be nice if stakeholders had more power. If, for example, people who lived in government housing had direct control over how that housing were run. Or if more corporations were genuine co-ops, where the employees were also the majority owners. I can agree with the ideal. But I also don’t confuse the ideal with reality. To suggest it’s a problem that something isn’t democratic when it never claimed to be is just tilting at windmills. You can advocate for change, if you really want and if you think your proposals are feasible, but to make the accusation like the system has somehow failed just suggests ignorance of how things work.
I make this point for two reasons. First, students are very often frustrated with their institutions. Often, that frustration is valid. But if you want to channel that frustration in an effective and tangible way it should be informed. To protest a lack of democracy in your institution is to court a very simple and direct dismissal. The answer of “so?” is entirely in order. Argue they are ignoring stakeholders and you may have a point. Argue bad policies or neglect of student interests and you may be right. But argue lack of democracy and you’re just asking to be ignored.
Second, too many student organizations (and I don’t single out the CFS here) beg off scrutiny of their policies and practices by pointing the finger back at the university itself. It may be valid to question the university’s practices, yes. But that’s an unrelated topic. The two have very little in common to begin with, and even if there were more in common it still wouldn’t be valid to claim that one party’s abuses are somehow mitigated by the fact that another party is doing the same thing elsewhere. That isn’t good reasoning – it’s just deflection.
If student media, in particular, is more critical of the CFS and other student-run organizations that may arguably be the product of some bias (as is frequently the accusation) or it may be bare pragmatism. Theoretically, students have direct control over the CFS and over their local unions and their other organizations. Some days you sure as hell wouldn’t know it, based on some decisions that are made and policies that are adopted, but the theory can never be dismissed. Universities, well, they may bow to lobbying pressure and the force of public opinion, but those are very abstract forces. Important, yes. But students don’t have the same degree of direct control nor will they ever.
Sadly, too many student organizations adopt a “with us or against us” attitude. They are convinced of their righteousness (and indeed, their goals may be just) but on that basis they perceive any criticism of their actions as support of their opponents. Therefore, any criticism of a student organization becomes a defacto defense of the establishment they oppose. And that is dangerous reasoning. Any organization can run off the rails. Just look at the Toronto Humane Society in recent news. It is the organizations that are most convinced of their fundamental correctness that are in the greatest danger of losing their way.
Of course the media (student and otherwise) needs to spread around the scrutiny. None would deny that. But “with us or against us” reasoning has got to end.
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Questions are welcome at jeff.rybak@utoronto.ca. Even the ones I don’t post will still receive answers, and where I do use them here I’ll remove identifying information.
