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| Thank you for voting to endorse the Fair Wages Now campaign! This campaign, being organized by the MTA, is focused on pressuring the Governor to allocate money for cost-of-living adjustments of 5% every six months over the next three-year contract (2027-2030). This campaign is ambitious, but worth the effort. So, what happens next?
Join your colleagues for a multi-union informational picket tomorrow, Wednesday, October 21 at noon on the campus Quad! Faculty, staff, and graduate students have collectively organized this event, which is part of a week of union action on public higher education campuses across the state. This is an escalating campaign that will culminate on November 20 with a noon rally at the Statehouse. Join Higher Ed colleagues from across the Commonwealth to demand the wages we deserve from Governor Healey. Our raises for the next 3 years are at stake. Stop by tomorrow for the informational picket to learn more and rsvp for the big November 20th rally! |
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| Those of us here before the pandemic remember the University Dining Club: a big room in Campus Center with a fantastic view of Boston Harbor, a salad bar, hot lunch and coffee, served with cloth napkins and real flatware, that was open to faculty and librarians for a modest price. It was such a nice place to break bread with colleagues, take campus visitors, or just find some quiet.
After the pandemic, it never reopened as it was. In Faculty Council meetings it became clear that the administration would not bring it back because it was not profitable. This sort of minute capitalism, in which we can only have nice things if they are also profitable, undermines our campus community. An eventual compromise reopened the room at lunchtime, but with no forks, knives, or napkins…nothing but a student-employee at the door checking IDs. Still, we had pizza lunches there and people routinely used the space. Now it’s been closed. The doors are locked, except for when it’s rented out. There is nowhere on campus for faculty and librarians to gather, host job candidates and visiting scholars, or simply eat lunch in a communal space of our own. This closure, particularly when combined with the shutting down of the McCormack and Healey Library cafés, erodes the very community our campus leaders claim they support. Where are faculty and librarians supposed to gather? Where should we take visitors to campus? Why does the university prioritize profitability over public good to such an extent that we can’t even have any place on campus for faculty and librarians to eat lunch together? We’ll be asking Provost Berger these questions and more at our meeting with him this week. |
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