Arizona for Education held a formative meeting last Friday, September 18, in front of Old Main in order to discuss a number of options to vocalize resistance against the manner in which state budget cuts have been hierarchically implemented across campus. A representative from the Arizona Daily Wildcat attended this meeting and later published an article dramatically misrepresenting the direction and contents of the meeting. The article has since been “updated” in what is essentially a rewrite, but a link is provided below nonetheless, in addition to our official response to the article.
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http://wildcat.arizona.edu/news/graduate-walkout-dead-replaced-with-mall-event-1.519290
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One might expect a journalist to embellish their subject matter, after all, isn’t that how news sells or wins awards? The September 19th article in the Daily Wildcat titled “Graduate walkout gaining momentum” stepped well beyond embellishment and into gross misrepresentation of what actually took place last Friday afternoon as concerned members of the University body gathered to discuss concern about the hidden and inequitable distribution of budget cuts that threaten the quality of education and research on this campus.
This misrepresentation begins with the article’s title. Not only is a “graduate walkout” not “gaining momentum,” it was, in fact, ruled out as an option during the first five minutes of the meeting because it would only diminish our capacity to educate undergraduate students and therefore runs counter to our purpose. It was decided instead that a more productive activity would be for those of us who teach to devote a few minutes of class time to teaching students what is happening, who/what is at risk, and what they can do about it. The “walkout” that Bergan says has been proposed for September 24th is actually going to be an informational rally held in front of the administration building – and absolutely NO students will be encouraged to skip class to attend. Organizers are hoping to draw attention to the consequences of secretive and differential budget cut process as students, faculty, and staff pass by between classes or during their normal breaks.
The title of the article is also misleading due to the fact that in addition to the graduate students on whom Bergan chose to focus, the group of individuals who gathered included undergraduate students, faculty members and staff members. Given that several faculty and staff members identified themselves as such, it is interesting to see that their presence was entirely overlooked and that none of them were (mis)quoted in the article along with two of the graduate students.
The two individuals who Bergan quotes in the article (other than GPSC president David Talenfeld, who did not attend Friday) have had their statements cut from their actual context and pasted into one that makes them sound far more confrontational than they were. Similarly, Bergan notes that the group which gathered “largely expressed that a walkout would have to include most of the graduate student community for the administration to take them seriously and not charge the teaching assistants with violating their contracts.” Not only did we decide against a walkout (still), but the issues of increasing awareness of budget-related issues and avoiding violations of our contracts were not directly related to one another. Rather, they were discussed in the context of providing a space for the university’s most vulnerable employees to comment on the budget process, such as staff, adjunct faculty, part-time employees – the very people whose job it is to make this university run efficiently. In fact, our larger discussion about being sure to abide by our contracts was noticeably, and perhaps not surprisingly, absent from Bergan’s article.
Budget cuts are going to happen, they hurt everyone, and we know it. However, we would like to have representation in major decisions that will affect education in our own university, our communities, and beyond. We’re doing this because we want conversations, not confrontations, with the university administration and our state legislature. It is a shame that an imaginary, singular radical action appears more interesting and newsworthy than the actual proposal for thoughtful and sustained efforts. However, it appears that Bergan attended Friday’s meeting in order to create a story and not to faithfully report the actual proceedings. This should not be tolerated by the Daily Wildcat or its readership.
