Anti-walkout
While some classes may be closed due to the walkout on Sept. 24 being publicized right now, I have great hopes that classes that actually teach something (i.e. anything but humanities, such as political science or English, really) will go on as if nothing happened. In case my hopes, that reasonable teachers would not participate in a political publicity stunt at the cost of their students, are dashed to bits, I am determined to make sure that my students are not affected, not in my class.
This supposed protest didn’t come up in our weekly Physics 111-BSC GSI meeting, and I hope it never will (because that would indicate that no one plans on skipping work that day). But in case it does, and in case any of the GSIs normally in the lab on Thursdays walk out, I will volunteer to be in the lab.
I know unions don’t like that v-word. People who volunteer don’t make any money and that means they can’t get a piece of the paycheck. Fuck the union. Fuck United Auto Workers Local 2865, a.k.a. the GSI union.
I have tried hard to keep politics out of my classrooms, whether it’s from me (you might have seen that I leave most … inflammatory political posts off this website) or from anyone else. I haven’t had to so far worry about the “anyone else” part, but if you think that I would let anyone harm the learning environment to serve their political cause just because opposing would be unpopular among my peers or because the damned GSI union would be displeased, you would be wrong.
There are only two things, short of me falling deathly ill, that can keep me out of the BSC lab on Thursday, Sept. 24: (1) my fellow GSIs show up to work and I don’t have to do their job for them; (2) none of the students come to the lab due to their enthusiasm with this walkout.
We will see what happens.