At 5 PM tomorrow, 100 scientists in lab coats are going to march through the streets of New Haven on their way to a graduate students' union meeting. During this meeting, graduate teaching assistants will likely vote to go on strike beginning Monday. I'll be there for the vote, although I still don't know how I feel about it.
The idealist part of my brain thinks that graduate student unionization is a great idea- I can't argue against protecting the rights of graduate students and allowing them to have a greater voice in how the university is run. The more pragmatic parts of my brain think that graduate students at Yale are really pretty well off and that a strike is going to be a relatively ineffective way of getting the university administration to recognize a union (based on Yale's previous responses to graduate student strikes).
It's a frustrating situation, really. I want to be able to wholeheartedly support the unionization effort and the strike. Unfortunately, I'll only know whether striking is the right thing to do in hindsight.
The idealist part of my brain thinks that graduate student unionization is a great idea- I can't argue against protecting the rights of graduate students and allowing them to have a greater voice in how the university is run. The more pragmatic parts of my brain think that graduate students at Yale are really pretty well off and that a strike is going to be a relatively ineffective way of getting the university administration to recognize a union (based on Yale's previous responses to graduate student strikes).
It's a frustrating situation, really. I want to be able to wholeheartedly support the unionization effort and the strike. Unfortunately, I'll only know whether striking is the right thing to do in hindsight.