Columbia University officials considered imposing stiff penalties against any graduate teaching assistants who skipped their teaching assignments during a strike. þþThe penalties, outlined in an internal memo that recently became public, included requiring the assistants to teach an extra semester or year or making them ineligible for summer stipends or for special awards.þþColumbia officials yesterday confirmed the authenticity of the memo, which was reported in The Nation this week and posted on its Web site. But they said they had ultimately decided not to impose any penalties on graduate students who staged a five-day strike last week.þþÿThis was a list of proposals to be considered if we were going to take action,ÿ said Alan Brinkley, Columbia's provost. ÿObviously, doing nothing was always an option, too.ÿþþSome graduate students, faculty members and union organizers said they were outraged that Columbia was willing to consider penalties like those outlined in the memo, which was signed by the provost and sent to 17 officials, including several deans, in February.þþTimothy Patrick McCarthy, a graduate student in history, said that both the tone and the content of the memo had surprised him.þþÿAny time workers go on strike, they understand that there will be consequences, like their pay being docked,ÿ he said. ÿBut to say that access to summer funding or money for thesis writing will be threatened is totally beyond the pale. That's hardball.ÿþþOther students said the memo had intensified their feelings of vulnerability when they were already concerned that Columbia administrators had not defended academic freedom forcefully enough.þþÿIt is a very, very striking thing for Columbia students to realize that they could be treated in this manner - that we have no protection from retribution,ÿ said Dehlia Hannah, a third-year graduate student in philosophy, who was on strike last week. ÿI think people are very sensitive to this, especially when academic freedom has been such a contentious issue recently.ÿþþThat debate over academic freedom has grown after charges by pro-Israeli students that some pro-Palestinian professors had intimidated them in discussions in and out of class. A Columbia committee found that at least one of the complaints was credible, and the university has created new procedures for students to register grievances against professors.þþMaida Rosenstein, president of Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers, which represents the support staff at Columbia and has been working to organize graduate student assistants, said a National Labor Relations Board decision last summer that graduate assistants at private universities were not eligible for unionization left them unprotected from the kinds of actions suggested in the memo. þþÿIt is really upsetting that the university even contemplated such actions,ÿ Ms. Rosenstein said.þþShe said that students and professors were very angry and were ÿstill determining what our response will be.ÿþþThe provost and others said the memo had grown out of meetings by a working group that Dr. Brinkley headed last winter to consider how Columbia might respond if there were a strike. At the time, they said, Columbia officials thought that a strike might be imminent and last all semester. The question on the table, they said, was whether there might be ways to soften its impact.þþÿWe didn't know what would happen, and we were trying to figure out how make sure we could deliver an education to the undergraduates,ÿ said Henry C. Pinkham, a member of the Brinkley committee and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where interest in unionization is greatest.þþÿThat was the key issue,ÿ he added. ÿWhat eventually developed was very different, a one-week walkout, and we decided to do nothing as soon as we found out what nature of strike it was.ÿþþOther sections of the three-page memo addressed how Columbia might cover its courses if its graduate assistants walked out, how to tell the assistants of the consequences they faced if they struck and how to tell parents ÿabout the steps being taken to avoid the disruption of their children's education.ÿþþEric Foner, a history professor who is a friend of the provost, said he considered the proposals in the memo outrageous but did not believe they represented Dr. Brinkley's personal views.þþProfessor Foner said that when Dr. Brinkley was chairman of the history department, before becoming provost, he strongly opposed any kind of punishment for striking students.þþDr. Brinkley said that the ideas he had put into the memo had grown out of conversations among members of his working group and others and that they had been assembled in a memo he sent out to make further conversation easier.þþ
Source: NY Times
