Sorry for the delay. I just couldn’t bring myself to publish the initial version of yesterday’s post. It was just too mean. You see, given that we have entered the realm of fantasy, at least in terms of the salary figures spouted by the admin, I had constructed an elaborate post based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Scott Roberts, chief spokesperson for the university, featured as The Mouth of Sauron, and well…you can just imagine the rest.
        While the post was meant to be funny, I decided not to publish it because I just couldn’t bring myself to characterize the other side as evil, even in fun. Yes, it is true that I have very little respect for the BOG exec, their negotiating team, and their chief spokesperson for the values they espouse. I even have reason to question their competence. But I know they’re not evil. Scott, for instance, is just doing his job. He’s probably just reporting what he’s being told to report. So while I might question his character for his willingness to misrepresent reality, and while I do think that the ill feeling he has created amongst the faculty will stick to him for as long as he’s at Acadia University, I know also that there is absolutely no sense in answering what I see as his wrongs with one of my own.

So here it is, Tuesday’s expurgated post:

The media campaign has begun again. The blackout is over. And the gloves are off. We even knew it was coming, or at least we should have. So I was a bit surprised at how troubled and angry some of us were when it actually came.
        I saw the anger first thing in the morning when I entered HQ. The front page of the Chronicle Herald read “Acadia Faculty Reject Offer.” That much was true. And if you read the entire article, you’ll see that it is balanced in its representation of the positions taken by the two sides. Indeed, I think our side comes off quite well. But the article begins with what can only be described as a whopper.
        Scott Roberts, chief spokesperson for Acadia University, paints faculty as greedy and self-interested. Apparently, we’ve just rejected an offer that would bring the average salary of an Acadia faculty member up to $100,000 by the end of a 4 year contract.
        Of course this is nonsense. We all know it. It’s even laughable. And eventually we got from anger to laughter by comparing our current salaries with Scott’s. We determined that he makes more money than 93% of Acadia’s faculty make. A couple of us broke out the current contract and roughly estimated that it would take the average full-time tenured professor about 20 years to attain Scott’s salary. That assumes an initial appointment at Assistant Professor, grid step 5. I know of a good many people in the Arts who were appointed at much lower levels, so you’d have to add a few years for them. The calculation also assumes a typical career path, which means that the faculty member isn’t a woman. It doesn’t pay to have ovaries at Acadia because they have a way of interfering with a “typical” (read male) career advancement. So add a few more years again for women.
        We probably should have been more angry when we actually figured all this out. But we weren’t. We knew that this exercise was irrelevant and had no bearing on the current negotiations. Nevertheless, our abilities to quickly tabulate the screwed up values of the university admin brought us back to where we were the day before: feeling very secure in the values we were upholding. And it’s a feeling we carried with us to the line and shared with our colleagues.

        So what is this new phase in the media campaign meant to do?
        First and foremost, I think it’s meant to demoralize us by turning public opinion against us. The generous public support we’ve received from people who understand the issues — from students, parents of students, local businesses, individuals, and other faculties across the province and country — has been very encouraging. And the idea that some of it could be withdrawn on the basis of utter nonsense is demoralizing. When some of my colleagues expressed that concern on the line, my response was twofold: Scott ported out the same rhetoric last time; and much more importantly, strikes are won on the picket line through solidarity, not in the court of public opinion. I think it is important that we remind ourselves of this fact on a regular basis as we enter the gloves off stage of the media campaign. We know that our strike is principled. We know that when we sign a principled agreement, it will protect and ensure the academic integrity of Acadia University. And were the entire province to think otherwise based on spurious information provided by the admin — I, for one, just won’t believe that people are that stupid — we could still take comfort in that shared knowledge.
        Of course, the Admin’s new campaign also means to divide us by doing a runaround on the negotiation process. It’s their way of trying to negotiate with the membership directly because we’re obviously being duped by the radicals in our midst.
        This strategy is getting a bit tired, I find. It’s also more than a bit insulting to all of us. First, it assumes we’re too stupid to do basic math. Then it assumes that we’re greedy sell-outs. I’m supposed to react by thinking, “Hey, I’ve been here for 11 years, and I’m not making anywhere close to $100,000. Maybe if I sell out a particular group, like part-timers, instructors, librarians, or CLTs, I will make $100,000. I should push for a vote now!” Not surprisingly, my colleagues and I didn’t even need to talk about this new iteration of the old strategy. We’re all trained to distinguish fact from bullshit (I would say “fiction” but to do so would be to impugn the word.). And, as Richard Cunningham’s sign registered on the line, we’re also smart enough to recognize that “Misinformation is not negotiation.”

        So what are the possible effects of the university’s new misinformation campaign? Well, I can see three very significant effects, none of which help them with their problems:

1. We get angry and we get stronger as a result.
There’s no way around that one. I’ve already seen it on the line.

2. They alienate students from faculty and ultimately make the university’s enrollment problems worse.
Alienating students from their professors with misinformation that characterizes us as immoral and self-interested is just a bad idea. I’m sure some students who aren’t fully aware of the issues already think this way. But adding fuel to this fire with misinformation is just plain silly. We are the people that interact with students the most. We provide the education they get at Acadia. Surely, if we are as immoral and self-interested as the admin is suggesting, we’re not fit to provide any education except for an immoral one. Any sensible student who believes this misinformation should run as fast as s/he can from such an education.

3. They attempt to get parents to put pressure on faculty by providing them with the same misinformation and ultimately make the university’s enrollment problems worse.
I’m not sure whether the misinformation they’re sending to parents is meant to provide some sort of reassurance that the university is looking out for the interests of students, but if I were the parent receiving such information, I would really think twice about sending my daughter off to an institution where the professors were so immoral and self-interested.

Biased though I am, I don’t think it takes a sophisticated reader to recognize the contrast between their media campaign and ours. Ours is informed by the old adage “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.” When I read the Chronicle Herald article mentioned above, I see Andrew Biro saying the same thing he has said since day one: Acadia University is a great place to get an education, and we must make changes now to keep it that way; we can’t afford not to act. While many may disagree with the union’s decision to strike, and while some may even disagree with the values we espouse, most would have to agree that our media campaign does not denigrate the institution and the education it provides (yet again, through us) to get some leverage on the other side.