I had one of my less admirable moments on the line today. I’m not proud of it, but I went off on a fellow faculty member who was spreading a false rumour that we were going to be engaged in formal talks at 3 pm today.
        Okay, saying that I went off on him might be a bit of an exaggeration. When he approached me, I told him he was an asshole for spreading rumours and that I didn’t want to talk to him. That is going off for me. It was still bloody childish of me to resort to name calling, and I regret it. And about five minutes later, I did talk to him. Later, I reported my own bad behaviour towards him on an incident report designed expressly for such altercations.
        Why? Because I was in the wrong. There are always going to be some people who don’t support the cause, for whatever personal reasons, and who actively undermine it. Sometimes they even do so with good intentions. And it doesn’t help to get angry with them. In fact, souring the mood on the picket line with angry outbursts at this juncture is probably just as bad for the cause as the spreading of false rumours.

        For the record, according to the two members of the negotiating team who were on the line this morning, one of whom is AUFA’s chief negotiator, there were no formal talks scheduled. There might be more baby math lessons planned, but that’s it. Still, rumours can have a life of their own. And by the time I began to quash this one on the line, it had already spread to HQ, where our people began to field inquiries from faculty and students.
        So why is this kind of rumour a problem? Because, as my own outburst might suggest, it preys on our emotions and could potentially weaken our resolve and therefore weaken our line.
        Obviously, I’m assuming that maintaining emotional equanimity is difficult for more than just me at this point. We’d all rather be teaching and researching and attending those endless committee meetings that make our lives as university faculty meaningful. Add to that the fact that there are people on the line who are in very vulnerable physical and financial positions because of this strike. Spreading an unsubstantiated rumour that has to be quashed, then, preys on the need we all have for hope and preys on the vulnerability we all feel. It can bring us down. I saw that myself as I walked through the line telling people that the rumour was false.
        So why was my anger a problem? Well, because anger, when it is uncontrolled, has the same potential to weaken the line as false rumours. Reason and good humour, in pretty well equal measures, have characterized life on the line to date. I’ve seen the benefits of these characteristics in my picket team’s continued commitment. We’d rather not be out, but while we’re out, we’re supporting each other. We’re keeping each other up. And anything that brings us down threatens to weaken us. Today, my anger was one of those things.
        Clearly, if we are going to win this battle with the BOG over the values of Acadia, we are going to have to privilege all our faculties for reason and all the reason of our faculty. If we are going to hold to the principles guiding our strike and avoid a three-peat (three strikes in three successive contractual negotiations), we have to stay strong now and hold the line, even when, sometimes, it’s so tempting just to go off on someone.