"We are the union! The mighty, mighty union!"
The lecture for WGSS 355 was almost empty this morning. To be clear, sparse attendance is the norm for this time slot - at the astonishingly early hour of *gasp* 9:30. Also, as a last minute alternative offered to relieve the 10:30 lecture space crises for an over-enrolled class, this meeting time doesn't fit into many students' schedules. About 50 students usually attend, stumbling bleary-eyed into SSS 114 and dropping in clusters throughout the 500 seat auditorium. Each morning, despite the low energy of the small, groggy audience, Professor Summers diligently puts on the whole show for the early risers, knowing full well that he will repeat every word about an hour later to a room stuffed to capacity.
It is now late in the semester, only one week left before exam period begins. Everyone is dragging, even Professory Summers, who at a recent TA meeting, mentioned the possibility of showing a movie or two to fill class time. And like I said, this morning's 9:30 crowd was particularly thin. Maybe about 25 or so straggled in, many of them quite late and some with visiting prospective Yalie frosh in tow, padding the numbers. One couldn't fail to notice the increased echo of Professor Summer's microphone-amplified voice against the wood panelling of SSS 114. As he lectured on about dubious scientific studies examining correllations between brain anatomy and sexual orientation, the minimal energy with which he'd begun his lecture all but vanished.
I was also a little lazy and distracted in my usual third row seat. Notetaking had lapsed within the first few minutes, the last entry on the page reminding me simply to download the lecture's powerpoint file from the class server later in the day. Without the task of recording lecture material to hold my attention, my mind wandered... meandering outside of the classroom into the streets of New Haven where several hundred TAs from Yale's humanities departments were marching on picket lines for the second day of their one week strike.
Yep, that's right. As I sat in my moribund lecture, being a teaching assistant, several hundred other teaching assistants were beating on drums, blowing on horns and raising their voices to tunelessly, but enthusiastically sing union anthems a the top of their lungs. They wore signs demanding all sorts of reasonable but rare things: dependent healthcare, pay equity, a fair and transparent grievance proceedure. As they marched passed Becton Hall and circled around the corner of College and Grove, their honking, drumming and general merry making seeped through the thick stone walls of my lecture hall and into the ears of comatose Yalies.
Professor Summers (towing the party line of the administration) lectured straight through the din, pretending that nothing that GESO, the grad student union, could do, not even an orchestra of tamborines twenty feet from his grand podium, could interfere with the effective education of Yale's precious undergraduates.
I really really wanted to go outside and bang on something. I could see through the window that a guy at the front of the line had improvised, making a very effective drum set with two spatulas and a frying pan. I was sure I could dig something out of my massive school bag that would make some noise. Like a good TA though, who for strategic purposes wasn't being asked to strike, I waited till the lecture was over before bolting for the exits. I followed the sound of joyful mayhem and found my fellow union members a few blocks away. In the blink of an eye, I had a sandwich board-style sign hung around my neck displaying a giant cartoon of a cell yelling "Scientists for GESO!" and I joined in the game of bull horn-aided call and answer...
"WHAT DO WE WANT?!"
"CONTRACTS!!"
"WHEN DO WE WAN'EM?!"
"NOW!!"
*honk* *honk* *bang*
Whoa! This is fun!
It is now late in the semester, only one week left before exam period begins. Everyone is dragging, even Professory Summers, who at a recent TA meeting, mentioned the possibility of showing a movie or two to fill class time. And like I said, this morning's 9:30 crowd was particularly thin. Maybe about 25 or so straggled in, many of them quite late and some with visiting prospective Yalie frosh in tow, padding the numbers. One couldn't fail to notice the increased echo of Professor Summer's microphone-amplified voice against the wood panelling of SSS 114. As he lectured on about dubious scientific studies examining correllations between brain anatomy and sexual orientation, the minimal energy with which he'd begun his lecture all but vanished.
I was also a little lazy and distracted in my usual third row seat. Notetaking had lapsed within the first few minutes, the last entry on the page reminding me simply to download the lecture's powerpoint file from the class server later in the day. Without the task of recording lecture material to hold my attention, my mind wandered... meandering outside of the classroom into the streets of New Haven where several hundred TAs from Yale's humanities departments were marching on picket lines for the second day of their one week strike.
Yep, that's right. As I sat in my moribund lecture, being a teaching assistant, several hundred other teaching assistants were beating on drums, blowing on horns and raising their voices to tunelessly, but enthusiastically sing union anthems a the top of their lungs. They wore signs demanding all sorts of reasonable but rare things: dependent healthcare, pay equity, a fair and transparent grievance proceedure. As they marched passed Becton Hall and circled around the corner of College and Grove, their honking, drumming and general merry making seeped through the thick stone walls of my lecture hall and into the ears of comatose Yalies.
Professor Summers (towing the party line of the administration) lectured straight through the din, pretending that nothing that GESO, the grad student union, could do, not even an orchestra of tamborines twenty feet from his grand podium, could interfere with the effective education of Yale's precious undergraduates.
I really really wanted to go outside and bang on something. I could see through the window that a guy at the front of the line had improvised, making a very effective drum set with two spatulas and a frying pan. I was sure I could dig something out of my massive school bag that would make some noise. Like a good TA though, who for strategic purposes wasn't being asked to strike, I waited till the lecture was over before bolting for the exits. I followed the sound of joyful mayhem and found my fellow union members a few blocks away. In the blink of an eye, I had a sandwich board-style sign hung around my neck displaying a giant cartoon of a cell yelling "Scientists for GESO!" and I joined in the game of bull horn-aided call and answer...
"WHAT DO WE WANT?!"
"CONTRACTS!!"
"WHEN DO WE WAN'EM?!"
"NOW!!"
*honk* *honk* *bang*
Whoa! This is fun!
posted by Eva Marie at 9:11 AM
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