Grad students on the march
Grad students on the march
Friday, March 5, 2010
Scores of graduate students marched with the Graduate Employees and Students Organization from the New Haven Green to Woodbridge Hall on Thursday, part of the National Day of Action to Defend Education.
(Photos by Charlie Croom/Photography Editor)
Comments
None 2 years, 2 months ago
So, I got the latest issue of GESO's tabloid, the VOICE, in my department mailbox yesterday. What a read!
Any reason the website hasn't been updated since 2008? C'mon guys!
None 2 years, 2 months ago
OMG, these freaks are back? Didn't they call for a union vote which they lost a few years ago? Way to go David Assouline! One lost vote wasn't enough?
http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/university-news/2009/03/05/grad-students-push-for-union/comments/
None 2 years, 2 months ago
Lazy humanities students. Why don't they go back to the coffee houses and continue pontificating on the role of gender identity in post-colonial feminist societies.
None 2 years, 2 months ago
@#3 The shallowness of people like you in the sciences reminds me why humanities are necessary
None 2 years, 2 months ago
I'm proud to see my colleagues united in such a strong display. This was a historic event. A warm contrats to all involved.
None 2 years, 2 months ago
"Any reason the website hasn't been updated since 2008? C'mon guys!"
This just points out how difficult academic publishing has become! GESO students can't even regularly update their own website. Down with world systems theory! Or something.
None 2 years, 2 months ago
Too bad the YDN didn't run a full story about this -- I am interested to know more about what the issues are at Yale, what the protest was about, etc. Hiring remains frozen at my current institution, and the situation sounds increasingly grim all over the place.
None 2 years, 2 months ago
Two can play at this game, #3. Bitter scientist, why don't you go back to stabbing kittens in the eyes and coming up with ways to sell yourself to the pharmaceutical industry.
Oh wait. Down on this end of the campus we value what we do and what you do as well. Universities host the exploration and expansion of human knowledge in a wide range of fields, not limited by profitability or practical applicability - in which case we'd have to shut down a lot of the sciences too, frankly, since only some lead to the next Viagra. I'm sorry you hated your English class, but to the extent that you spew hatred towards other academic disciplines, you embarass science.
Also, I don't see you teaching every day like people in the languages do. And you want to call them lazy?
None 2 years, 2 months ago
The only reason GESO still exists is that Yale's grad school has a high enough turnover that today's crop of proletariat wannabes don't have any memory of their predecessors' absurdities. Give up, GESO: your self-absorbed sense of entitlement only alienates other graduate students, undergraduates, professors, and Connecticut workers with a true claim to organized labor. Your efforts only point to a secret desire to be as put upon and downtrodden as the heroes of America's union history. But seriously, can you honestly make the argument that your lives are that bad? And that you suffer under the thumb of a Big Bad University that not only treats you quite well, but that you APPLIED TO VOLUNTARILY, just like the rest of the student body?
Ugh. I cannot wait to read the YDN headline, "Sensing its Own Irrelevance, GESO Disbands...and Apologizes for Wasting Everyone's Time."
None 2 years, 2 months ago
4, I don't see what is shallow about making objective observations. You see, that is what we do in our field.
None 2 years, 2 months ago
Thank god for science. Otherwise we'd be contemplating our navels all day.
None 2 years, 2 months ago
GESO's efforts would work in favor of undergrads. The graduate school is cutting back on grad student support--and in doing so they're requiring sections (and classes taught by grad students) to be much larger. That's not good for graduate students and not at all good for undergrads either.
None 2 years, 2 months ago
How about lobbying against universities that oversupply PhDs and harrassing anyone who dares to accept a cut-rate adjunct job?
None 2 years, 2 months ago
What is so funny--and so telling--is that #3 makes a pointed, witty, and spot-on observation while the "rebuttal," #8, is humorless, bitter, and wrong. Kind of like conservative talk radio versus the now-defunct Air America (or the adage that Marxist/Feminists have no humor...).
None 2 years, 2 months ago
Please go back and read comment No. 8. There is really nothing more to be said on the topic.
None 2 years, 2 months ago
Interesting how you failed to notice the bitterness and frankly outright hatred of "witty" comment No. 3. But then again, some humanistic training might help. It usually does help with understanding words.
None 2 years, 2 months ago
Tangential observation. We know how neo-Liberals (versus Classical Liberals, now known as Conservatives) love big government. Nothing new there. But it occurred to me today that Liberals love any big government: monarchy, union thugs, tyranny... To be fair, one can make the complementary complaint with regard to Conservatives: they dislike any big government, whether monarchy, representative democracy, etc.
But watching GESO in action reminds me that Liberals would thrive (if that is the right word) under, say East German rule (they would likely figure out the right butt to kiss or arm to twist to get their "fair" share of comrade crumbs).
Back to the topic: No, #16, I rather doubt that the Bill Nye, Science Guy was bitter at all -- as a member of the liberal arts entourage (but most decidedly NOT a supporter of GESO or its thug dogs) I can say that the observation was spot on. And funny. And that your response is also funny.
And sad.
Let us pray...
None 2 years, 2 months ago
Hieronymus, Like most people who like to talk about what liberals are like, you have no clue what you are talking about. East Germany? You wouldn't know East Germany if it hit you in the face and said 'Hi, I'm East Germany!'
None 2 years, 2 months ago
Hieronymus is full of hot air. See his posts on anything having to do with religion.
None 2 years, 2 months ago
I'm not sure if they are angry or witty, or both, but their comments are often funny. I suspect it's anger, usually misdirected at their lab manager who steals all their work, promotes it as his own, and gets his name on all the big journals. Sidney Altman, anyone?
None 2 years, 2 months ago
This University, like any other, was founded for the pursuit of knowledge. There was never a guarantee, implicit or otherwise, that a student would profit from his hard work, or be rewarded with employment.
To that end, both sides have completely lost sight of why they are here. Sciences and Humanities students: you are here to learn, not to contribute to corporations, and not to be compensated for study.
Also, as an active Local 34 member, I find GESO to be offensive to the Labor movement. It's unprecedented for academics to be considered "labor", and UNITE HERE should be embarassed to be associated with GESO.
None 2 years, 2 months ago
@ Anon (#21) It will probably surprise you to learn that there are thousands and thousands of unionized academics throughout the United States, and the unionization of professors, adjuncts, and graduate assistants in commonplace throughout the world.
Graduate teachers have been unionized since as early as 1967 in the case of the University of Wisconsin. The largest academic union in the country is, curiously enough, the United Auto Workers, which represents teaching assistants in the University of California system.
In many ways academic workers have been recognized as 'labor' longer than many of the kinds of clerical work done by Local 34 members. There is nothing 'unprecedented' here at all, and Yale's argument that there is somehow something special about teaching and research at a private university as opposed to a public one has never been more than the exact same rhetoric that was used back in 1984 to disempower clerical workers and the 'special' relationship they have to faculty. .
None 2 years, 2 months ago
Hieronymus, Thanks for your defense, and being one of the few to understand that the observation was not an attack on the liberal arts as a whole, but the marxist subset throwing around jargon.
None 2 years, 2 months ago
Just to note, the joke wasn't unfunny because it was offensive; it was unfunny because it was trite--actual humanities students can come up with much better riffs on the stupidity of academic jargon.
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