In the wake of picket lines and absent teaching assistants, professors were forced to adapt to the two-day Teaching Assistants’ Association walkout by canceling class, moving lecture outside campus buildings or holding class as usual despite the strike.
Conducting his class outdoors on Bascom Hill Tuesday rather than have students fight through picketing TAs surrounding Helen C. White Library, Assistant Professor of English Henry Turner insisted students still attend class while also not disturbing the strike.
“I certainly would never cross the picket line to teach my class … [but] canceling classes is too easy a solution,” Turner said, adding forcing students to venture onto campus and be confronted by the TAs was a “good pedagogical experience.”
Turner said he talked with his class about issues the TAA was striking on. According to Turner, many students who argue they should not be robbed of the classes they pay for hold “simplistic” views about the way the university works, not realizing that poor treatment of TAs jeopardizes the quality of education the university provides as a whole.
“The issues the TAs are striking about are just a tip of the iceberg about so many other issues about funding for higher education,” he said. “The state is systematically undermining the value of higher education in the state.”
Several professors held class in a location other than their normal classroom, from Union South to St. Paul’s Church on State Street. Some were more creative in how they chose to conduct lecture than others.
Sociology professor Charles Camic conducted class electronically by sending students in his sociological theory course an e-mail when lecture began detailing his notes on the assigned text and page numbers he wanted them to respond to. Students were then required to write an e-mail back to Camic about the assigned text and were also given the chance to give feedback on responses from their fellow classmates.
“I thought it was kind of fun because I required all of them to send e-mails to myself and to everyone in class … this way, everyone was able to participate,” Camic said, adding the students did not seem to mind the unconventional lecture.
“They seemed really excited about it,” he said.
However, not every professor supporting the TAs’ right to a fair contract moved his or her class outside campus buildings. Political science professor Edward Friedman, whose five TAs all went on strike, held his lecture in Ingraham Hall Tuesday morning as usual.
“I talked,” he said.
Friedman estimated about three-quarters of his students attended lecture. Having allowed students to ask questions of himself and his TAs about the possibility of a strike in previous lectures, Friedman said he again asked students Tuesday morning if they wished to talk about the strike during lecture. Students, however, told Friedman they were there for lecture and wanted to proceed with class material.
Although personally in favor of the TAA getting higher wages and a fair benefits package, Friedman said he could not alter his class schedule because of his responsibility to students.
“Students pay tuition, they have different politics and I can’t walk away from students that want to be there,” he said.
Not every professor felt that way, however. Many canceled classes to avoid forcing students to cross the picket lines even if they held no strong opinion one way or the other concerning the TAA strikes.
“[I] felt uncomfortable with the possibility, however remote, of seeing myself on the 6 o’clock news as the professor who apparently disrespects the strikers’ cause enough to lead up to 330 students right through the picket line in full view of the rest of the world. I wouldn’t shy away from this role if it were something I felt strongly about, but this wasn’t it,” Professor Grant W. Petty, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences professor, wrote to his class in an e-mail announcing class was canceled.
