When I arrived on the picket line Wednesday morning, I was scratching a face in need of a good shave. Everyone seemed in a good mood, even though some of the other male faculty members were showing a bit of duskiness on the chin themselves.

There was optimism in the air. At a union meeting held the night before, Peter Williams announced that the BOG team had invited us back to the table for 7 pm Wednesday night. Perhaps our guerilla picket had done some good. Perhaps the bad press Acadia was getting nationally had caused some members of the BOG a bit of discomfort. I admit to being less optimistic than my team about the possible results of the evening negotiations, but I was happy to see both sides at the table again.

I think I was also buoyed by the most significant statement that I had heard from the negotiating team during the meeting. After reporting that the BOG proposal hadn’t budged one inch financially since June, while our proposals had been cut by $6 million, the team had decided it could no longer shave any more from our proposals if it was to get what the membership had directed it to get in a campus wide survey. Hence my increasingly hairy chin. I loved the symbolism of it, though not the itch. But more important than the simple symbolism of unshaved facial hair was the statement Jim Sacouman made to explain why we wouldn?t be shaving any more off our proposals: “nobody will be sold out.”

The principles that we collectively gave our team to guide them in negotiations would have been compromised in very serious ways had they accepted the board’s latest offer. Some people and some programmes — I can only assume part-timers and CLTs, our most vulnerable members and the backbone of many smaller programmes at Acadia — would have been sold out. And our team wouldn’t accept that.

So on Wednesday morning, I scratched my chin and put up with a little discomfort to celebrate the symbolics of nobody being sold out.

There were other reasons to be in a good frame of mind Wednesday morning. Acadia students had organized a rally to support their faculty at 10:30 am, near the end of my picket team’s shift. And my team was located in the perfect position to see the rally. I brought my digital and video cameras to record the event. I also recorded some video of life at HQ and on the line. The video has been posted on Youtube, but I’ve embedded video below for those who weren’t able to see them.

The first video is a student rendition of John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” the words adjusted slightly for the occasion:

The second video shows the students? march through the streets of Wolfville:

And the final video shows life on the picket line, Day 3:

In a day heavy with symbolism, be it scratchy faces or student rallies, we had reason to hope.