Sigh .. Well Maybe I Will Lose Weight

Wish I weren't here but I am (along with approximately 9100 other faculty members) so I may as well continue this blog. I will ask the Local's permission later this evening to post a link to this Blog for our folks on our Local site, and if I don't get permission to do that I will FW this to the two other college strike bloggers, so hopefully the word will get out that the Bloggers Are Here.

I am doing the early picket shift -- goodness only knows why, because I HATE the cold (at least, ever since I gave up skiing I do!) but on the other hand it gets the obligation over early and leaves me the rest of the day to maintain the website and warm up.

After my picket duty today I watched CITY TV today which had a phone-in and e-mail in hour devoted to the strike. I was disappointed (but not surprised) that the calls were generally anti-faculty. Most of the callers/e-mailers were students, so the fact that the opinions were 2-1 anti-faculty is in a sense understandable, but I am concerned that we as faculty have clearly been too "even-handed" and even overly management-oriented in talking to students. Mea Culpa frankly. I have tried to present a reasoned approach to my students, and have encouraged them to research the topic. Gad ... what a mistake.... see below.

When I got off the picket line I checked my email and got one from a student (not just sent to me) which stated amongst other things ... "This is the second time in 3 years that our teachers have more than willingly, simlply [sic] abandoned all care and concern that they have constantly stated they have for us students ... these trends of strikes every other year confirms their ideology and mindset."

I find this comment fascinating, given that college faculty has not been on strike in the last 17 years. Hello???

Such is life. I have simply deleted the e-mail. It is not worthy of reply.