I have a subversive idea to discuss with the Unit 2 folks. What if we started posting our lectures online on a centralized website (Virtual York!), and asked the students (and anyone for that matter) to pay $20 per month to access the online courses? would it be considered a strike breaking? We could also have online discussion and interaction with the students involving the Tas. The money can be used to pay both the CDs and the Tas based on the number of courses they cover. This would take off the pressures on us from both the students and their parents to end the strike and would support us financially to prolong the stike against the ratification vote. It would also proof the redundancy of the
obsolete way Universities are managed today. I am sure there are many details that should be worked out but I wanted to know what do you think generally about the idea.
In Sol. Reza Rahbari (Sociology and Social Sciences)
January 10th, 2009 7:31 pm
Are you kidding? The strike has already screwed over 50,000 undergraduate student’s learning, it’s nearing the point where it will screw up their academic year for good, and now you want to CHARGE them for it?
January 10th, 2009 7:58 pm
Why would any students pay money for access to course materials that they are already entitled to and have paid for through enrolling in York courses? This would not take pressure of parents or students because your online course access have no bearing of officiality with the University, and I believe is a form of strike breaking. It would be offering to teach your students “off campus” and making a profit from it, when they have already paid for the class. Bad Idea.
January 10th, 2009 8:17 pm
Hi Reza,
With all respect, while I’m sure this idea has the best of intentions, I have to say I find it troubling on several levels.
First of all, to be blunt, yes, it would definitely be strikebreaking. To use the more apt (if somewhat uglier) term, it would be scabbing — doing the work of a striking worker — even though in this case that worker would be yourself. I cannot say strongly enough how problematic this is.
I’m also curious about why you suggest asking students to pay for this service. They’ve already paid for it when they paid tuition to York. So it seems unseemly at best to consider taking money for it, even if it were ethically acceptable (which for me it definitely would not be — others may of course see this differently).
On a practical level, obviously not all students would go along with such a plan, which would mean that you’d end up teaching the same material twice: once online and again when we get back to class. Further, if it were actually successful, it would be counterproductive to our (entirely legal) strike as a whole.
January 10th, 2009 8:29 pm
I loove subversive teaching especially if we did interactive teach-in reminiscent of the 60’s free university–no charge–just free exchange of subversive ideas. If it is free it wouldn’t be strike breaking it would be strike support. no?
January 10th, 2009 10:03 pm
I agree, Liz. This kind of subversive teaching is a pretty interesting and useful undertaking, and if it were done off campus (or on the picket lines, as happened in December) that wouldn’t constitute strike breaking. But perhaps I misunderstood the original post in this thread. I thought it was referring to resuming the teaching of our regular courses?
January 10th, 2009 10:29 pm
At least you are thinking. Would it be your own university?
January 10th, 2009 11:56 pm
I’m still cringing over this terrible idea. York students paid their fees and now sit at home with no classes thanks to this strike, and you’re suggestion they be CHARGED for half-baked online teaching? Seriously, this is one the silliest things I have ever heard in my life. It’s like purposefully trying to find a way to anger undergraduates and the community as a whole. CUPE has terrible PR. The media, government and everyone else has been convinced to hate us, and now we’re proposing charging students for services they have ALREADY paid for and are NOT getting due to OUR strike.
January 11th, 2009 12:28 am
Yeah, charging would be no good, but the idea of creating an online forum (or even a non-electronic off-campus location I suppose) where students, faculty and TAs can get together and talk / teach / learn is a good one. It would have been even better to have organized it earlier in the strike to counteract the negative press that CUPE 3903 has received, and to reduce the marginalization that many undergraduates must be feeling throughout the strike.
January 11th, 2009 9:39 am
Yes, that would have been better at the earlier time in the strike. I know most undergraduates would have gone for it as well. And it would have lessen the marginalization upon the students by showing them that that at least their education was important to the professors and TAs.
January 11th, 2009 6:19 pm
I proposed posting our lecture notes online but unfortunately the suggestion of charging the students distracted most of the comments from the substance of the idea. I thought $20 per month would be less than what the students would pay normally to get to York in a month to attend their classes, yet on the other hand would be a large financial support for us to bear the financial burden of the strike. A course with 80 students enrolled each paid $20 per month would cover what we get from the University before the taxes! This is a small fraction of tuition and the provincial government’s subsidies to the Universities like York. I believe that at least as long as Social Sciences and Humanities are concerned the university budgets are used to maintain an archaic institution already made obsolete by new technologies and sooner or later these institutions would become redundant anyway. However, this is a huge issue and should not detract us from the concrete issues generated by the strike. Forget about charging the students; let us decide collectively to offer our lectures for free online not only to the York students but to the general public at large. Thus I do not think this would be a strike breaking because it would be outside our Institutional relationship with York and also because it is not meant to be part of our teaching job involving the York University students only.
Most prestigious universities around the world post the lectures online and there is thus nothing strange or diminishing about us doing the same [see for example, http://itunes.stanford.edu/ (Stanford University) and http://itunes.ox.ac.uk/ (The University of Oxford)]. In proposing this idea I am thinking of its enormous PR impact, not only with the students showing them our concerns and well intention but at the same time as a show case of the work of such talented University educators which have been treated by the University Administration and the Mass Media in awfully denigrating terms. Imagine hundreds of high quality lectures posted on line open to scrutiny by the public at large which I believe would silence our detractors. All we need right now to announce our plan and then give ourselves one week to work out the practical aspects of preparing and posting the lectures.
Reza R.
January 12th, 2009 3:05 am
Rahbarir,
You still don’t seem to understand. I’m surprised that you especially have such a lukewarm response to the criticism over charging students. The issue isn’t all about CUPE. At some points we have to actually think about the students. You do understand that students are already paying tuition, right? You do understand that they are currently not getting the education they paid for, correct? I cannot understand how you even suggest this idea of charging students for services that they have ALREADY paid for and are not getting.
Posting up half-baked lectures two months after the strike began doesn’t show that the students aren’t being marginalized. We are past the point of no return and the media hates CUPE more than can ever be recovered. We haven’t shown that we care about students for the past weeks, what is the point of doing so now? Instead of thinking up ways to get money from students who have already paid for their education, maybe we should be focusing on trying to end the strike.
January 13th, 2009 12:20 am
I don’t see why there is so much criticism about Reza’s idea. I’m just an undergrad student btw, so I don’t have a clear understanding of every aspect of this strike and therefore can’t comment on the whole strike-breaking thing if students were charged for the lectures. But anyway, yea I definitely spend more than 20$ a month getting to York. On the other hand though, there’s a huge number of students that pay or are still paying for housing right? So that doesn’t really work for them.
As far as lectures themselves, only select courses would have lecture notes available though right? Since contract faculty teach one chunk of all the courses at York, and the full-tenured profs teach the other chunk? (again I’m not 100% clear on this, I’m not even sure if I’m using the correct term to describe the other profs). But anyway, wouldn’t that leave out again a percentage of students that are taking courses not taught by contract faculty?
And just a general comment about the strike. I’m sure a lot of students don’t feel that CUPE are the only ones at fault here. Most of the more reasonable students I bet have read the stories of both sides and have kept an open mind about the whole situation. The Windows/Mac ads are pretty terrible though, I couldn’t even watch more than 10 seconds of the first one. When I glanced over the media release about York’s settlement offer, I was thinking that they were trying to scam you guys too, and that was before CUPE said on the website: ‘York just tried to scam us’. And now the ratification vote, which everyone knows is just another way of trying to scam the union members, won’t take place for another week? Trust me, York Administration is doing a pretty good job of making themselves look bad.
January 13th, 2009 1:20 am
hpun, let’s say for a second that I actually believe your claim to be a student. Why would you pay extra money when you have already shelled out THOUSANDS of dollars of tuition for an education you are not currently receiving? It is DUE to the striking union that you are not getting that education, and now you’re going to pay EXTRA money to that same striking union to receive a half-baked version of that education?
Surely you can see the problem here.
Most students don’t think CUPE are the only ones at fault. I have emailed several of my students and the consensus is the same – neither CUPE nor the university seems to care about the students. CUPE goes on with unreasonable demands and laziness, while York refuses to budge and cares more about strategic planning to end the strike rather than the interests of students.
But it remains that there is a heavy anti-CUPE sentiment among them, as well as everywhere else.
January 13th, 2009 1:52 pm
Hi all – as I argued earlier, I think the idea of charging students for online lectures is a no go. It introduces all kinds of ethical issues regarding the strike, students who already pay tuition, etc. plus it would be difficult to administrate.
Nevertheless, I still think the idea of putting together online lectures is a good one. The students shouldn’t be held responsible for the material once the year resumes (as I imagine only a minority of students would be interested), but it would be a great way of reconnecting with students and keeping one’s critical skills sharp. It’s just that at this point in the strike, which appears to be drawing to a close, the effort in putting something like this together and advertising it might be more than it’s worth. That being said, if someone WERE to put something like this together, I would seriously consider adding some of my own past lectures (at least the ones that aren’t completely ‘half-baked’ :)).
January 13th, 2009 11:37 pm
Well just from comments I’ve read in the media, one thing that worries me is that we’re expected to be learning all the material in our courses that would’ve been covered during the strike by ourselves. That means when the strike ends all this material will appear on the exams right? Even with the remediation planned by the University, we still end up with a lot less class time right? Last I checked it was 13 days added. Whether or not any of the above is true, I’m not sure, but I think having online lectures posted will at least highlight some of the areas we should be focusing on.
Obviously yes, nobody would be thrilled to pay for the lectures, and like I said I’m sure a lot of people aren’t saving on transportation costs like I am, but it’s better than nothing. I’m also a little sympathetic to the fact that union members aren’t getting paid as much as if there wasn’t a strike. Obviously, I wouldn’t be sympathetic if I didn’t feel the University was to blame for this strike in the first place, but I think it is the University’s fault. During the time I’ve been at the University, new buildings have been popping up left and right. Granted, they’re also for the benefit of students, but everyone knows the University makes a lot of money; York’s student population is so high not because they care about students, they like the money the students give them. I think with the past experience of a union strike several years back, the University should have made a much better attempt to avert this one, but it seems like they have no desire at all to reallocate their spending.
January 13th, 2009 11:44 pm
Oh and yea, why do you insist the lectures would be half-baked? I’ve taken several courses where the lectures from the professors were made available online, and were the only things that we needed to study for exams. I trust the lectures proposed here would have the same amount of effort put into them as the ones I’ve been given before. Unless you guys put like a disclaimer on everyone one of them … “These were done while on the picket lines … during our lunch breaks.”
January 14th, 2009 12:41 am
LOL hpun. Actually though, my understanding is that students cannot be held responsible for material not covered during the strike. All classes are canceled during the strike and when classes resume, professors will need to adjust their courses so that the remaining material will reasonably fit into the remainder of the year. This means that some lectures will be shortened, combined or canceled and some assignments may need to be revised – this is senate policy. I’ll be making some big adjustments to the course I teach in terms of lectures AND the final assignment to fit them in what’s left of the year.
So if there were lectures offered, they would have to be entirely optional for students and not count towards courses already in progress. Does that make sense?
January 14th, 2009 2:31 am
@hpun
In the end there is no financial impact on us after the strike is over. You don’t have to shed any tears. You should be worrying about your own education.
I think you’re reading our propaganda a bit too deeply. I am a TA and I have never had any financial trouble. I understand my role – I am a graduate student, I TA to supplement my income, and I’m happy with it. York TAs are VERY well paid compared to certain other schools. I completely understand why the University would decide there are other priorities. York needs a boost, it’s reputation is wavering, the admin needs to focus on bringing it up to par and unfortunately the CUPE wages are not the problem there. Unfortunately, all this strike has done is lower the reputation of York even further. I love this university, and I hate watching my union tear down its reputation even further.
Okay a bit off topic there…
January 14th, 2009 10:27 pm
Thanks for the clarification guys.