I write to express my astonishment with Jenna Wolf’s recent article, “BU TAs say no Union needed.” As president of Boston University’s Graduate Student Organization, I would have hoped to receive a request for an interview before The Daily Free Press declares that teaching fellows uniformly reject the prospect of unionization. I fail to see how the comments of four TFs from three departments justify such an assertion.
The issue of unionization is complex, and any discussion regarding its potential effects on the Boston University community demands deliberate and thoughtful attention. To this point, the GSO, which represents 2,000 graduate students from 37 arts and sciences programs, has worked with Dean Whitaker and his office on a series of initiatives designed to improve the quality of graduate student life at the University. We continue to work with the administration on such concerns as housing and health care. Thanks in large part to this spirit of cooperation, the GSO has not been compelled to consider the option chosen by our NYU colleagues.
While Ms. Wolf’s ultimate conclusion may reflect, in fact, a prevailing opinion among TFs, her means of obtaining that result remain deeply flawed. The comments of the TFs and TAs interviewed in the piece have very little to do with unionization; the existence of teaching credits, the strength of faculty-student relationships and the degree to which an undergraduate respects his TF simply fail to address any significant component of a unionization effort. In fact, the entire article resembles a series of disjointed quotes loosely held together by the headline’s insistence that the words that follow speak to unionization. Clearly, they do not.
A year ago, The Daily Free Press ran a similar article, Gabriella Spinnato’s “Despite ruling, BU grad students yet to unionize” (Nov. 27, 2000), which, once again, polled an unrepresentative number (one) of graduate students in attempting to register views on unionization. In both cases, it would have been in the best interest of the newspaper to solicit comments from GSO officers, committee members or departmental representatives. This course of action would have provided readers with a representative and precise understanding of the issue. In future Daily Free Press articles, I look forward to more thorough coverage on the concerns of graduate students.
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