Striking is pragmatic

Last month the Indiana Daily Student opinion pages carried a column titled “Suite, Suite Protest.”

In that column, the author expressed his sympathy for and reservations about the upcoming IU Strike.

The author claimed “the strike’s goals are too radical to actually change anything” and suggested strikers lack pragmatism.

I suspect there are a lot of potential strikers on campus who feel the same, whether they’re students, workers or faculty.

It’s very easy to fall into the habit of labeling any demand for change as extreme and impractical.

After years of listening to the administration trot out the rhetoric of necessary sacrifices and shared belt-tightening, many of us have come to believe it.

The reality, however, is that the strikers are the pragmatists on campus. Let’s consider a few examples.

Recently, Purdue University announced it would freeze tuition and most student fees for two years. This dramatic decision will be at least partially financed by a pay freeze for Purdue employees making more than $50,000 a year.

It is clearly possible for public universities in Indiana to freeze tuition and to finance that decision by living up to the tired promise that the administration will share in any belt-tightening.

Further, one need not go too far afield from Indiana to find struggles similar to ours occurring right now.

Members of the Service Employees International Union at the University of Illinois just ended a three-day strike for higher wages.

SEIU is reporting that fewer than 3 percent of its members decided to cross their picket-lines. The university was forced to call in volunteers to maintain the facade of normal functioning.

The workers will now resume negotiations with their university’s administration after forcefully demanding a living wage.

Would anyone be willing to call the men and women of SEIU silly idealists who simply don’t understand the harsh reality confronting the modern university?

The true idealism is to believe that any public university can continue along a trajectory of higher tuition for students, lower wages for workers, exorbitant course loads for faculty and continual pay raises for administrators.

If we continue to follow that course, our University will become public in name only, a bastion for rich students built on the backs of underpaid and overworked staff and faculty.

Those of us planning to strike are not demanding anything radical. There is nothing radical about a plan for tuition so inoffensive that a conservative like Mitch Daniels could endorse it.

There is nothing idealistic about continuing the centuries-long struggle for higher pay for workers.

At this point, there is nothing more pragmatic than to strike. There is no other way to force the administration to recognize our demands.

Idealists will tell you to sign petitions, to trust in the administration and to hope for the best. They have failed.

We’re telling you to take over your campus, to stop trusting in an administration which has failed again and again and to create your own future.

That’s real pragmatism.

­— atcrane@indiana.edu