The Travails of Resuming Law School on a Struck Campus
Recent developments at Osgoode Hall are conspiring to introduce an unseemly innovation on 16 March 2015: two-tiered legal education.
But first, a brief recap on how we got to this point.
On 6 March, following four days of strike action, CUPE 3903 leaders agreed to put the York administration’s latest offer to a ratification vote. The offer, while providing job security for dozens of high-seniority contract faculty (Unit 2), left over two thousand TAs (Unit 1), GAs, and RAs (both Unit 3) without secure tuition indexation language, thereby sealing the fate of current and future international graduate students gouged by a $7000 tuition hike in 2014. At the administration’s behest, the offer also maintained the exclusion of “LGBTQ” as an employment equity group, unless and until another collective agreement on campus included it—a position as difficult to explain as it is to countenance.
Not surprisingly, then, CUPE 3903’s 9 March ratification vote resulted in a split: while 65% of Unit 2 members voted to ratify, Units 1 and 3 rejected the offer by 59% and 77%, respectively.
With almost 3000 education workers still on strike on 10 March (and gaining public support from faculty, undergraduates, and law students), the administration’s next move was unexpected: it passed a motion through York Senate to resume five major academic programs, including the Lassonde School of Engineering, the Schulich School of Business, and the still-in-search-of-philanthropist School of Nursing. 11 March thus bore witness to the first throes of academic activity since the strike began eight days earlier, adding strain and subtracting safety from already assailed picket lines.
As it happened, 11 March was also the day Osgoode Hall’s Faculty Council met to determine the law school’s position on the work stoppage. After a tense and protracted three-hour discussion with more than twenty spectators in the audience, FC voted 34-17 (with 4 abstentions) in favour of resuming classes on 16 March, in accordance with the broad-strokes “Resumption and Remediation Plan” (RRP) prepared by Dean Lorne Sossin, Associate Dean Trevor Farrow, and Assistant Dean Mya Rimon. To move forward, the RRP required official approval from York Senate, which was secured at a special meeting held on 12 March.
This brings us to 13 March. Unless circumstances change dramatically over the weekend, Osgoode Hall will reopen Monday on a struck campus replete with seven picket lines, no TTC service, and dozens of non-operational programs. It will be a morning of decisions and divisions, of resumption in the context of a legal disruption—a morning that will recur every school day on loop until this strike is over.
Besides undermining the collective bargaining process, this premature restarting of classes poses several dilemmas for Osgoode students. First, it forces those who support CUPE 3903 to resume academic activity in one way or another. Nowhere in the Plan are students afforded an opportunity to observe the strike to its full extent by withdrawing completely from school-related work until its conclusion. The language of “choice” in the RRP in this way masks a prior and more fundamental act of imposition.
In place of real options, the Plan promises “accommodation” to students who “choose” not to cross picket lines. Provisionally, this entails access to lecture and seminar recordings, enhanced usage of Moodle, alternative assignment due dates, and the option of electing a credit/no-credit option for final exams. Yet anyone familiar with the state of technology at Osgoode, or the inimitable experience of in-class seminars, or the importance of letter grades for employment and scholarship opportunitieswill discern that “accommodation” begins very quickly to resemble inferior education. Two-tiered learning, it seems, is what awaits members of the Osgoode community come Monday.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the RRP is that it requires “students who elect not to return to classes [to] notify the Assistant Dean’s office by March 23 2015 of their decision.” Although the specifics have yet to be filled in, it is peculiar that Osgoode, as a law school, would presume and thereby induce students to cross picket lines by placing the onus of notice on the other side. That is, why aren’t students who decide to cross picket lines required to fill out forms communicating this decision? Of course, there are obvious numerical and logistical rationales for such an arrangement, but there is also an ideological element at play, one which normalizes a world where workers’ rights are taught and trumpeted in class while seamlessly trampled on the paths taken to get there.
For these and many other reasons, the Osgoode Strike Support Committee (OSSC) is getting organized. With the backing of law professors and Student Caucus representatives, we will be meeting with the Osgoode administration to propose significant changes to the RRP. We will also be holding pickets outside Osgoode to inform our peers about the stakes and meaning of attending classes during a strike. At the same time, we are preparing off-campus teach-ins and study groups to ensure that we all learn course material apace with our classmates and perform to the best of our abilities on exams, papers, and assignments. To get involved or to find out more, send an email to <osgoode4workersrights@gmail.com>.
In doing this work, the OSSC is committed to positive, open, and inclusive dialogue with all Osgoode community members. We resolve to respect differences of opinion and belief, while in protest of the circumstances giving rise to their expression. We are also aware that a silent majority of students will cross picket lines on Monday out of fear, anxiety, and pressure to perform well in school, even though they support CUPE 3903 in its struggle for a fair collective agreement. To these students: know that you are not alone, that you do have a choice (constrained though it is), and that if you decide not to cross picket lines at any point during this strike, the OSSC will be there to support you. For all its failings, the RRP does protect your right to stay out of the classroom, and we intend to enhance that protection in both breadth and quality.
All that said, Monday morning is on the horizon, fault lines are emerging, and hard decisions are going to have to be made. As fellow OSSC member Darcel Bullen put it, from that morning onward, Osgoode will be in class and Osgoode will be on the picket lines.
Which Osgoode will you be?