Working with the man to work for everyone

Well, I hate to be the one to burst everyone’s bubble, but the IU campus strike isn’t going to work.

Now, as all the strikers fire up their emails and begin to type out all the ways I’m wrong, unpleasant to be around and smelly, I know that I’m probably not the only person who looks at the strike with the same sense of hopelessness.

I believe the strike is important, and I hope that it will be powerful. It represents issues that many on campus believe in and experience daily. These are issues that students have tried to bring to administration countless times.

But administration won’t listen. They’ll get a little fussy when the protesters pass by their offices, and they’ll try to avoid being caught in the halls.

But that’s the way the system is, and, in these kinds of situations, sometimes that’s the way one evokes change — by working with the system.

The student VOICE report was just published, a report that administrators will sit down, read and review. Why wasn’t an opposing VOICE published — one that the strike compiled and turned into administration? President Michael McRobbie would probably be more willing to read a thoughtful report than listen to an angry strike.

The Indiana General Assembly is, as we speak, passing funding and budget legislation for Indiana colleges and universities.

Why didn’t a committee from IU go to speak before the Assembly? Why weren’t letters written, legislators contacted? Why didn’t the energy going into the strike go into seeking political help?

The Assembly could have taken a serious look into all the problems that the strike represents and seeks to solve serious issues such as tuition costs, materials costs, integration, diversification and class structure.

In short, strikers should be doing something other than marching through the hallways annoying those faculty members of whom we are asking help.

A strike is like being the first one to start name-calling in an argument. It puts the other person on the defensive. It makes them unwilling to give. The system sucks, but sometimes it just works that way.

IU answers to IU. If more students really, actively sought ways to get in with administration, ways to influence faculty, ways to gain political advantage, then change would come faster and easier.

The strike will happen, fizzle and die. Next semester it will be the thing I talk about in passing with a friend while drinking coffee — that time when there was that big protest and a bunch of people missed class for a day, which is pretty gutsy considering how some classes use attendance as a GPA machete.

I hope that the strike is successful. I hope that it brings about change. I hope that it finally gets administration to listen to student issues.

But sometimes, it’s better to work with the man than against him.

­— ewenning@indiana.edu