It was the first day of classes. Students were walking in every direction, bemused and uncertain of their class schedule for the day. Many professors were also walking about, talking freely with each other and students while holding signs that say “EMU-AAUP FACULTY FOR A FAIR CONTRACT”. Every once in a while, a smartly dressed figure with a pleasant demeanor and confident gait would emerge from Welch Hall (Eastern Michaign University administration building) and walk by our table decorated with expressions of student support for faculty �" leaflets, signed petitions, buttons, stickers and handwritten posters. Some of these figures gazed at our ensemble and would silently mouth, “HI,” apparently mystified by what they saw. Others, patently annoyed, would walk by doing everything in their power to keep a professional appearance while ignoring us.

The faculty had voted 311 to 14 to authorize the strike on August 30, 2006, if an agreement was not reached by the end of the day on August 31st. Students became aware of the strike as they moved into their dorms and apartments or otherwise heard about it via local media throughout the Labor Day weekend.

Three fellow students and I met on Tuesday September 5, the day before the first day of classes. We organized ourselves to rally student support for the faculty, obtaining material support (tables, chairs, flyer copies) from the union office. We quickly developed leaflets and literature to hand out to students as well as a petition letter of student support for the faculty which demanded that the administration return to the bargaining table with real intentions of negotiation. We gathered over 1200 signatures in the first three days of classes. These were delivered to the Assistant to the Vice-President of Student Affairs Jim Vick on Friday afternoon, September 8.

We had many rallies, the first of which happened at on September 6. This rally had 30-40 students “storming the Bastille” (Welch Hall), one student wielding a megaphone, while all chanted, “Administration EMU: We are Here! Where are you?”

Where they were was in their meeting rooms deciding how to defuse this disturbance to their work. One officious looking lady came out of the meeting to send us outside the building (a request we ‘respectfully’ obliged). Now, knowing the room in which they were meeting, we began with the full crowd of 50+ to chant outside their window, “Fair deal, right now! Back to the table right now!”

The five o’clock hour came and went. No one emerged from the administration building as we chanted and marched around it and the rest of campus for over an hour. After Howard Bunsis, EMU AAUP (American Association of University Professors) President, spoke briefly to us, and we began to disperse. Jim Vick, the VP Student Affairs and Administration Yes Man, then came out and invited 12 of us in to have a ‘Q&A’ with Jim and his colleague, Sue Kaettelus, an administration negotiator. This was quite surreal and the whole time we were having this informal dialogue, I was trying to process the numbers they were throwing at us. I was also thinking that if they can take the time to do this with us, then why not deal directly with the faculty?

As you may already know, the union offered to suspend the strike for 24 hours if the administration returned to the table on September 12th (12 days after the start of the strike). The administration did return to the table but failed to engage in anything more than a carnival shell game of contract provisions �" continuing the stiff-arm tactics that has characterized the administration’s approach to these contract ‘negotiations.’

There is nothing remotely like democracy occurring in the systemic operations of EMU. The EMU Board of Regents, unlike U of M, are appointed by the governor �" not elected and unaccountable to students, parents, faculty, or anyone else. In conjunction with the administration, they have offered contracts that only address the salary and benefits of tenured faculty. When the faculty negotiating team has not accepted Regents and Administration proposals, the negotiations have been ended by the administration. This is like saying, ‘we will negotiate as long as you accept our proposal.’ It is also similar to dealing with a two-year old who doesn’t want to stop playing outside when it’s time to come to the family dinner table.

The EMU community should not be subjected to the fluctuations of the so-called ‘postsecondary education market’ or any further mismanagement of our funds by self-serving administration hacks - management whose interests are geared toward maintaining the current hierarchy within the EMU system, rather than educating students.

Support the power of teachers! Use the power of students!

C. Kulanova is a student at Eastern Michigan University.