Neoliberal U: Hunger Strike in the Ruins of the 35-W Bridge

[dharmamarx]

Mere feet from the literal ruins of the 35-W bridge collapse, Minnesota's public infrastructure continues to crumble. The University of Minnesota is mounting a campaign to break the University's AFSCME union (that represents its clerical, technical, and healthcare workers). Only four years after a previous campaign to destroy the workers' step increases, the University is now attempting to lower these workers' salaries by refusing to adjust their wages for inflation. In doing so, the University is relying on (and distributing to its own undergraduates!) fuzzy math that would make an Enron CEO blush; the University is claiming that it is offering the workers an 8.5% wage increase! Despite facing intimidation from the University, students and professors have mounted a hunger strike to protest the University's attempts at union breaking.

This story needs and deserves bigger attention as it is a national story about the effects of neoliberalism on higher education. The large underlying cause of this strike is decreased state funding for higher education (thank you Governor Pawlenty) coupled with an administration that is unaccountable to its own University and that has no respect for the civic ideals a University is supposed to represent. The University administration has responded to the state's decreased funding in the most unethical way possible: they gave themselves big http://www.uworkers.org/node/113">pay raises!, built a new corporate-sponsored stadium (just like the state of Minnesota!), and constructed a costly neonatal clinic (when providing quality prenatal birth care would have been far more cost effective). The same administration recently destroyed the University's General College, its branch that provided special classes to its most disadvantaged students. The University is no longer a public good in the eyes of its administration; it is a corporation being run for their personal profit.

This is a trend that we're seeing across our country. Just as a few months ago, the collapse of the 35-W bridge focused attention on our decaying infrastructure; here we see, within a few feet of the ruins of the 35-W bridge, the same neoliberal policies destroying our society's intellectual infrastructure. The administration misleads its own students about the strike, but more importantly, it addresses its students as customers instead of as citizens. In other words, administration has provided these students with an ethical dilemma (should I or should I not cross a picket line?), but the U simultaneously refuses to let these students respond to this dilemma as citizens. (Neoliberalism always silences its critics.) An instructor who asks his/her class to vote on whether they as a class want to cross the picket line or hold their class in a safe nearby location off-campus faces retaliation by the University administration; the U says treating its students like citizens is contrary to the students' “interests,” which, of course, correspond exactly to the administration's economic interests.

When you have politicians and administrators who only think in numbers (increased revenue, increased rankings) and not quality (what are we teaching our students?), who only see consumers and not citizens this is the society you wind up with: a smoldering 35-W bridge and a University in Ruins right next door.

2 causes for hope: 1, Democrats like Barack Obama, Elizabeth Edwards, and Al Franken have come out in support of the workers. 2, Much of the student support for the workers is being led by the University of Minnesota's newly reformed branch of Students for a Democratic Society.

The strike needs more national attention, though, as the future of higher education is really a national issue. You can send some financial support to the U's AFSCME workers through their webpage. Also, contact information for the University's Regents is available here. Please give them a call or drop them a note, and let them know whether you would like your children to attend Enron U. Please do so before any of our hunger strikers wind up in the hospital.

I am an instructor and student at the University. This is my first post so I apologize if I fouled anything up. Also, if anyone knows how to get this story more exposure in the liberal blogosphere I would be grateful.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Very interesting! Please post this in the Minnesota forum, too.

And welcome to DU.

[dharmamarx]

2. good to be here

Ok I posted it over in the Minnesota forum, too. Thanks.

[unhappycamper]

3. Good article, dharmamarx

:kick:, r, the best of luck for a good outcome, and welcome to DU. :hi:

[dharmamarx]

4. Thanks!

I just spent the day handing out leaflets in solidarity w/ the hunger strikers. It is amazing how unaware most of the students at the University are about the strike, but that's the way the University wants to keep them: misinformed customers who shut up and pay their bills. I think the hunger strike is really starting to peak undergraduate interest, though. The strikers would be really grateful to anyone who would be willing to send the regents at the U an email or a phone call. This story may be on the verge of breaking nationally.