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| Current Events |
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AAUP Past President Rallies for Graduate Assistants http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/newsroom/highlightscurrent/Penn.htm AAUP past president Jane Buck, spoke Monday at a rally in support of the graduate-employee union at the University of Pennsylvania. Buck noted that the AAUP is a strong supporter of the right of graduate employees to engage in collective bargainingif they choose so strong that both Buck and current AAUP president Cary Nelson were arrested for the cause last spring. She urged Penn president Amy Gutmann to meet with representatives of Penns union, noting that graduate employees, according to figures gathered from the Penn Web site and published by the graduate-employee union, now teach more course sections in the School of Arts and Sciences than do tenured and tenure-track faculty. The only ethically responsible route for the Penn administration, Buck said, is to count the ballots cast by its graduate employees in 2003 and, if the majority voted for unionization, to come to the table and engage in good-faith bargaining. Regarding the frequent claim of university administrations that graduate students are not employees because they are students whose teaching duties are part of their professional preparation, Buck commented, Only the intellectually stunted or willfully obstructionist are incapable of understanding that a person can simultaneously occupy more than one role. The developmental psychologist Jean Piaget observed that children typically develop the ability to place objects and persons in multiple categories somewhere between the ages of seven and eleven. Are we to believe that the highly compensated presidents of some of our most prestigious private universities are not capable of the level of reasoning of a second-grader? . . . . It is both disingenuous and risible to assert that the mentoring relationship is harmed by good faith negotiations aboutsalaries, benefits, and access to fair grievance procedures. The AAUP is unique in granting full membership, including voting rights and the right to hold office, to contingent faculty and graduate students. (posted 2/27/07) |
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