OPINION & EDITORIAL
Undergraduates should cross lines
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Also by Badger Herald Editorial Board:
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- $$FC (December 6, 2007)
- In a bind (December 5, 2007)
- Entitlement Town (December 4, 2007)
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- Crossing the line (April 21, 2004)
- Call for law (April 29, 2004)
- Stop in the name of education (April 1, 2004)
- Checkmate? (April 15, 2004)
- 1 strike and you're out (March 7, 2005)
by Badger Herald Editorial Board
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Today the Teaching Assistants’ Association of the University of Wisconsin-Madison begins a two-day strike meant to further pressure the Office of State Employment Relations into a contract agreeable to the union. TAs and PAs have set up picket lines outside major buildings, while some undergraduates refuse to cross those lines - a show of support for their TAs. Still other students and professors conduct classes at substitute locations. In spite of these developments, we again call on undergraduates to reflect on this situation in detail and cross picket lines: Do not let the TAA carry out its hypocritical actions unchecked.
The TAA’s tactics have the political effect of driving many students to support its position, but this board questions that legitimacy. Why should students, many of whom support the TAs, be the ones to miss out on classes as a result of problems at the negotiation table? Why should students be put through the trouble of missing class - classes made more expensive as of late - when many seek academic counsel at this crucial time, shortly before finals? Undergraduates should not suffer for the current stalemate, yet the TAA seems willing to make them do just that.
We again ask those students considering crossing the lines to look at history. When the state Legislature chose to significantly increase the tuition of undergraduates at this university, the TAA did not raise such a fuss. But now that TAA interests are on the line, it asks students to work with it to stop the State’s continual degradation of University funding. We question whether undergraduates should be so willing to sacrifice for the TAA when said organization was unwilling to do the same.
In an interview with this Board, the Office of State Employment Relations made it clear that any possible strike actions by the TAA would be illegal not only under state law but also under its current contract. In similar interviews, representatives of the TAA acknowledged this, but called their actions a form of “civil disobedience.” Some argue students should join the TAs in order to learn the true meaning of an education in citizenship. This board might sympathize with just such an argument if the law to be broken were blatantly unjust. Yet the union agreed not to strike under its current contract. A careless premeditated dishonoring of that contract is not a form of education - it is a form of lawlessness. Promoting such reckless action is hardly an education in upstanding citizenship.
In the end, students must realize the TAA’s actions are hypocritical. It claims to stand up for the University but hurts undergraduates in the process. The TAA wants to preserve the economic integrity of the institution - effectively asking students to join it - but was unwilling to take similarly drastic actions to prevent undergraduate tuition hikes. Its supporters call on students to join in an act of civil disobedience, even if the TAA acknowledges the tactic as illegal.
Undergraduates must not be afraid to cross lines. Such an action is justified.
