SWA a necessary presence on campus
I read with interest the letter to the editor of Student Life, Sept. 9, 2006, by Jake Greenblatt. I read with interest the article on Student Union policy concerning demonstrations, by Ben Sales, in the same issue. Both refer to the Student Worker Alliance (SWA) rather critically. This criticism is mild and appropriate. Apparently some students, faculty and administrators are concerned about what the SWA might do next.
However, some expressions of this concern cross the line of acceptable behavior: for example, threats of violence to the SWA if they try anything this year. A threat to the SWA, or to anyone else for that matter, is a threat to us all. We do not have to agree with them or to like their tactics of civil disobedience, but we must be civil and nonviolent.
Now may be the right time to clarify my relationship with this group, because I am publicly linked to them. I support their broad goals but not necessarily everything they have ever done, or might possibly do. When I was asked to speak at the SWA sit-in in Spring 2005, I asked if I could come as a worker, not a faculty supporter. I had read the SWA fliers posted in dormitories in Autumn 2003 and was intrigued by their concern about the exploitation of lecturers and adjunct faculty. When I was in graduate student government at the University of Pennsylvania I addressed these issues, and now that I am employed here, I have my own issues (see “Students Protest Removal of Lecturer’s Job,” Sept. 27, 2006, and “Lecture Positions Valuable to Students,” Sept. 29, 2006). I was proud to be a participant-observer at the SWA sit-in. Just as I support the troops but not the war, I supported the hunger strikers but not the hunger strike, which I felt was an unwise escalation and detrimental to the health of students. I offered to take the place of a hunger striker for a day (although the sit-in ended just before my number came up). I know I have the respect of the SWA members, and they have mine. They took great personal risks for a cause, and I am proud to have shared in that risk, alongside other teaching faculty.
Now that the SWA has been granted a place on University labor relations committees, I appeal to the SWA as a worker, on my own behalf and on behalf of other lecturers. I hope that we can all turn our attention this year to hiring and employment issues in the college, and education and administrative reform in general. I believe we need a union, or some such independent institution, for our protection, but I would not want to be part of a union that would not let me work as hard as I wish for my students’ sake. I doubt if any other teaching faculty would want this either. Let’s all discuss these issues in the months ahead. University administrators, please ask yourselves if your jobs are really necessary. Wouldn’t you rather be teaching, instead of interfering with teachers? Isn’t that why you went into academia? It is never too late to change, as individuals and as an institution, and get back on the right track. We can make better use of our human resources.
The SWA has no official faculty advisor, but here is some gratuitous faculty advice: keep your promises, even if the same University officials do not always keep theirs. A promise is sacred. Gandhi teaches us this, if we don’t already know it instinctively. Please remember the University’s own motto, adopted as the SWA motto: “per veritatem vis,” Latin meaning strength through truth. I understand that the SWA promised not to occupy any more buildings uninvited. Let’s keep this promise.
That having been said, I know for a fact that many students who toured our beautiful campus during the sit-in were very surprised to learn that our students are not all apathetic careerists who only care about themselves. This influenced their decision to come here. Perhaps Washington University should have a sit-in every year, for the sake of its public image.
Jerome Bauer is a lecturer in the department of Religious Studies. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]
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On February 18, 2010 at 12:30 pm Jerome Bauer said
For the record, I offered my home office space to the SWA in Autumn 05, and our Rochdale Home LInux Server hosted a Wiki for the SWA and the faculty in solidarity with the Living Wage campaign. I hosted the SWA’s victory party in Spring 05, when the WashU Coop turned it down, out of fear of retaliation from Quadrangle Housing and the University. I also hosted their victory barbecue, and the photo gallery is hosted by WashU Coop Library website, jammed offline in Autumn 07 but soon to be back online. All the Deans and Faculty Fellows and Associates were invited, and a few attended and asked to be kept on the mailing list. I wrote support of the SWA into my Five Year Plans, submitted to my colleagues once or twice a year.
On February 18, 2010 at 8:51 pm Jerome Bauer said
Also for the record, I was one of only two faculty members at the Autumn 03 SWA meeting, the other being History Associate Professor Howard Brick. A week after attending this meeting, I received a letter, addressed to BOTH my home and school addresses, extolling all the benefits extended to NON-UNION faculty members. I checked and this was exactly the same wording used on the official WashU website, with “non-union” inserted. I was so offended by this cheesy attempt at intimidation that I have never, never, never looked back from my decision to support workers’ rights at WashU, and neither should any of you.
Howard Brick denied in a Student Life interview that he wa Faculty Advisor of the SWA. He waited until he had tenure before he taught his course, “History of American Radicalism: From Abolitionism to the Battle of Seattle,” and came out as a labor organizer. I sat beside him in the hallway of the occupied Admissions Office, and he told me how proud he was of his students, who took the initiative to start the SWA. If he was not the SWA Faculty Advisor, I do not know who was.
Professor Brick waited until he had tenure to stick his neck out for labor. I, and other Lecturers, cannot get tenure, so we risk our necks whenever we speak out. I joined the 2005 April Welcome Living Wage Sit-In only when the ink was dry on my seventh annual Lecturer’s contract. According to the Lecturer’s Policy in force at the time, I was supposed to have something like a real career path, and advancement to Senior Lectureship, after having passed the sixth year milestone.
The Lecturer’s Policy is a fraud. I resolved to test it, when I nearly lost my job in the midst of a medical crisis, in Spring 2003. It failed the test. That is NOT a rhetorical overstatement. We must fix it. Please support Lecturer’s Policy Reform, here and everywhere. Please see http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=3598950403&ref=ts
Please support only Student Union candidates who will reintroduce, and pass, the tabled Resolution Advocating Increased Protection of Lectureship Positions, http://www.cfu-lc.com//su_lecturers_policy2.htm#resolution
Please see also: http://www.cfu-lc.com//su_lecturers_policy2.htm
On December 13, 2010 at 1:52 am Jerome Bauer said
Here is the SWA’s letter of solidarity, Autumn 06. The Living Wage Sit-In was in Spring 05, not April 04 as the letter says. The SWA held a number of rallies in Spring 2004.
To whom this may concern;
On behalf of Professor Jerome Bauer, lecturer in Religious
Studies at Washington University in St. Louis:
The members of the Student Worker Alliance urge you to
reconsider the termination of Professor Bauer’s University
lecturing position. We believe that removing Professor Bauer
constitutes a real loss to students and the University. Professor
Bauer not only enriches the University with his knowledge as a
professor in the Religious Studies Department, but also cares
for every student in his courses. Individual members of the
organization have interacted with Professor Bauer in varied
ettings: lecturer, Coop advisor, faculty advisor for student
organizations, mentor, and community member, Professor Bauer
never ceases to give of his time and efforts to further student
education.
The University’s Mission Statement affirms a commitment to
“prepare students with the attitudes, skills, and habits of lifelong
learning and with leadership skills, enabling them to be useful
members of global society.” Professor Bauer time and time
again fulfils this goal as professor and community member.
Washington University administration acknowledged that
Student Worker Alliance members taking part in the April 2004
sit-in would not face repercussions due to their personal
involvement. This promise of amnesty, we insist, must also
apply to all professors tacitly or implicitly involved in the sit-in.
Professor Bauer’s specific participation in this student
movement confirms his commitment to the University goal of
fostering students capable of ameliorating the global community.
He held no responsibility in the decision making or actions of
students involved, yet his support encouraged Student Worker
Alliance members to continue their efforts to improve the lives
of campus workers and the overall campus environment. In no
way does Professor Bauer’s association with the sit-in
demonstrate attempts to harm the Washington University
community, but rather reaffirms his conviction as professor and
socially-aware community member to preserve student
endeavors to resolve community dilemmas.
As students and friends of Professor Bauer, we the members
of the Student Worker Alliance thank the administration for
acknowledging this letter. We hope that the University will
continue dialogue and negotiations with Professor Bauer to
ensure his future as a Washington University faculty member.
[I have the original letter and a pdf scan, with several signatures]
On March 29, 2011 at 2:29 am Jerome Bauer said
After a week camping in the cold with the jobless, the homeless, and the activists, at the St Louis People’s Settlement, I sent this open letter to Chancellor Wrighton, the student and professional press, and the entire university community. This was sent on April 1, 2010, and is framed as an April Fool’s joke, but this is no joke. The Facebook event will be ongoing until our issues are resolved.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=107667452597965&ref=ts
Location
Admissions Office, Washington University of St Louis and Utopia
One Brookings Hall
Saint Louis, MO
Created By
Washington University of Utopia
More Info
April 1, 2010
Dear Chancellor Wrighton and Washington University Trustees and Community:
We, the Student Worker Alliance of Washington University of Utopia, are the proprietors of the motto, per veritatem vis, “strength through truth.” We have reserved all rights to this motto, which was first expressed in material form on our flyers, posted all over campus in Autumn 2003, though it is eternal, universal, and sacred, like any other promise.
It has come to our attention that you have been using our motto on your diplomas and other documents, and it is carved in stone under the archway of Brookings Hall, your administration building. Permission was neither asked nor granted to use our motto as if it were your own, and therefore constitutes infringement of our rights. In terms of the Copyright Statutes, we are entitled to an injunction against your continued infringement, as well as to recover damages from you for the loss we have suffered as a result of your infringing conduct.
In the circumstances, we demand that you immediately:
1. remove all infringing content and notify us in writing that you have done so;
2. credit all infringing content to ourselves in the following manner:
3. pay a licensing fee in the amount of $50,000 annually, the approximate cost of an education at Washington University in St Louis, to support the Student Worker Alliance of Washington University of Utopia.
4. immediately cease the use and distribution of our motto on your diplomas and other documents;
5. deliver-up for destruction all unused or undistributed copies;
6. undertake in writing to desist from using our motto in future without prior written authority from us.
7. honor all promises made to the workers of Washington University in Saint Louis and its subcontractors, and honor your promise of student participation on all University labor oversight committees.
8. cease and desist from sending cease and desist letters to satirical websites and entrepreneurs who take the initiative to provide better service for your community than you can do. Please let initiative be rewarded here, not punished.
We await to hear from you by no later than close of business on July 4, 2010.
This is written without prejudice to our rights, all of which are hereby expressly reserved.
Yours faithfully,
Jerome Bauer
–Chancellor, Lecturer, and Service Worker, Washington University of Utopia (and so are you, if you want to be…)
–Worker, in Solidarity with the Student Worker Alliance of Washington University in Saint Louis, by mutual agreement
per veritatem vis
all power to the imagination
“You may say I’m a dreamer,
but I’m not the only one
Perhaps someday you’ll join us,
and the world will live as one”
–John Lennon, “Imagine”
On June 27, 2011 at 11:05 pm Jerome Bauer said
Tag Photo
I posted a flyer on the Washington University in St Louis campus in autumn 07, containing the text of my op-ed, “SWA [Student Worker Alliance[ a necessary presence on campus," published in Student Life in autumn 06. One of these was pointedly taken down right in front of me by a University official, after which an offer of employment as a contracted adjunct lecturer was withdrawn and a gag order went into effect. Even if you do not support collective bargaining, please let's support free speech, open expression, and free association.
The woman who pulled down this flyer bore a remarkable resemblance to the fierce looking woman to whom I was introduced at the Leadership Lunch, autumn 06, by my freshman student Bharath Mohan, also co-author of the Student Union “Resolution for Increased Protection of Lectureship Positions.” My talk at this lunch was titled “Mixing It Up and Taking Risks,” for some reason, probably referring to my pride in sharing risks with my students, expressed in this op-ed. No doubt I was expected to talk the talk and walk the walk of a campus radical but I was told by Bharath that I could speak about whatever I wanted, so I spent the whole time promoting the WashU CoOp and the expansion of our network. I promoted cooperative living as mainstream and old-fashioned, and won over the crowd (which consisted of many campus leaders, including Student Union officers and Washington University administrators). Bharath introduced me to a woman who had spent the entire time frowning at me. I do not remember her name, perhaps because she did not speak to me or give me any kind of polite acknowledgment. Perhaps I disappointed her?
Later, in autumn 07, somebody who looked just like her marched directly at me across an empty college green, from Brookings Hall to Holmes Lounge, in the path of the security camera installed to warn of civil disobedience. This woman stood right next to me and glared at me as I posted a flyer to advertise my “Miracles, Marvels, and Magic” class, held in the Catholic Student Center Library by the good grace of Father Gary Braun, who showed up at one of our classes in Kayak’s Coffee Shop just to invite us there. She did not pull down the flyer, she just marched right back to Brookings in a huff. This was autumn 07, the same time our Lecturer’s Policy Reform and Cervantes Free University Facebook groups were ostentatiously hacked, the same time a tour group was steered away from one of our open houses in Holmes Lounge: “We don’t talk about THAT!” This was the time when students were trying to get their dormitories to host Cervantes Free University classes, after a Student Life news story (spring 07) and an op-ed endorsement by Jill Strominger (autumn 07).
Also in autumn 07, I tabled for Cervantes Free University and Learning Cooperative [Community] under the auspices of the Washington University Cooperative Network, of which it is a part and of which I am a co-founding residential member. I was greeted by an administrator who shook my hand, gave me his card (I still have it), and congratulated me for not only talking the talk but walking the walk on labor issues (his words). He thanked me for my messages sent to the Faculty Associates Listserve during the 2005 Living Wage Sit-In (in which I simultaneously endorsed the libertarian counter-demonstrations for the sake of free speech and used both as a teaching moment). He remarked that he too had always wondered why teaching assistants are paid more than adjunct lecturers. I later learned that the table was almost taken away. One of my students informed me, when we met for our weekly discussion group, that he had received a call from a very irate administrator. She told him I had no connection with the University at all and no business on campus. A few months later, on Earth Day 08, WUstock, I was politely greeted by a security guard, who shook my hand, complimented me on the good work I was doing teaching low cost or free courses, accepted a free t-shirt, then called the police. No fewer than three uniformed WUPD officers surrounded me and my box of t-shirts in the middle of the Swamp, looking fierce and embarrassed as the crowd watched, before they let me go without a word. Were they afraid I would start a revolution or a commotion by sitting on the grass and teaching for free my signature courses that the University will no longer pay me to teach? On the comment board of Student Life I had pointed out that the University had broken many promises to its workers and its labor advocates, invalidating the SWA’s promise not to occupy another building. Even so, I advocated not another sit-in but rather a sit-out, moving one’s class to the college green, as many faculty do regularly. The chief point of my op-ed “SWA a necessary presence on campus,” is to urge restraint and to remind our idealistic students that we must all keep our promises, including the one not to take over any more buildings. For that, I get WUPD in my face.
What set them off? Perhaps the last words of this flyer, “It is illegal to fire or intimidate somebody for supporting organized labor.” I can only tell my own story. For other perspectives, check out a student documentary on the SWA made a few years ago, and talk to WashU alumni who were members of this group, or counter-demonstrators.
PS: The lady or ladies in my narrative above may be the basis for the mythical Donna, the one with the office in the basement of the Women’s Building with the Associate’s Degree in Communications, who makes all the big decisions at Wash Who? (Thanks, Steven S. Hoffmann!)
PPS: I was not even planning to teach anything on the college green, I was just trying to sell or give away my last few t-shirts and have a good time. I offered to volunteer for one group, and a social worker gave me her card, but when I made the same offer to a service sorority, a young South Asian American woman told me she had to be careful of her associations. That broke my heart. She should have been my student.