4 ms·

TBH the way you explain it sounds to me like 1st and 2nd year stem students were disengaged and uninterested in solidarity with their academic peers who have le

TBH the way you explain it sounds to me like 1st and 2nd year stem students were disengaged and uninterested in solidarity with their academic peers who have less options than them. I'm not even particularly fond of the humanities I just don't understand why you wouldn't fight for the allowance for your peers to start families, god damn!

andirk 3y ago
> who have less options than them. So the humanities folks' priority is sculpting a union program to their specific needs. That also doesn't sound very "fight for the allowance of your peers". That's democracy though. Doesn't mean the right choice is made but that the voters pull the strings.
- EatingWithForks 3y ago
  I think it is objectively the right choice to enable people to build families if they're going to be in a program until their late 20s! This sounds ridiculous to me on its face-- why the hell wouldn't you support your maximally educated populace (getting doctorates) to have families? The 1st and 2nd year STEM kids (literally kids-- you can enter into a masters fresh out of college, so like 21-23 yrs old) who see the opportunity to try and organize to help their humanities peers start families and instead don't participate, exit to industry (an option humanities graduates probably don't have), and say nothing as a governer with a presidential campaign crushes their organizing hopes... a lack of solidarity with one's peers is exactly how it sounds to me.
  - lmm 3y ago
    I'm darkly amused that you spend the first half of your comment talking down about how one group of students is "kids" compared to another and then in the second half complain about how those same people have "a lack of solidarity with [their] peers". Gee, I wonder why!
  - xvedejas 3y ago
    Calling 22 year olds "kids" and then also saying they have a lack of solidarity with their older "peers" seems a bit insensitive to me. People having families is great, but if their benefits come from the expense of your own salary, that's asking for more than solidarity; that's asking for altruism.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
oatmeal1 3y ago
> I'm not even particularly fond of the humanities I just don't understand why you wouldn't fight for the allowance for your peers to start families, god damn! What the GP said was that instead of taking a cash option that would benefit all members, they chose benefits that only benefitted parents. It's reasonable to be angry that an alternative that would benefit all members wasn't chosen.
- shagie 3y ago
  https://taa-madison.org/history/ https://taa-madison.org/history/ > TAA activists in the Fall of 2008 also turned their eyes again toward attaining Domestic Partner Benefits for TAA members and UW employees. The TAA pushed on the issue, joining the LGBT Campus Center to table on Library Mall during their Coming Out Week, and creating a memorable Bascom Hill display. The TAA then networked into the University’s Domestic Partner Benefit Task Force, and arranged meetings with Governor Doyle’s Office and UW Chancellor Biddy Martin, while activists also spoke with nearly a thousand TAA members about the importance of winning Domestic Partner Benefits. The State Legislature, which in years past had meticulously denied state employees Domestic Partner Benefits, was poised for a sea change in the November elections. The TAA’s Political Education Committee launched an AFT COPE award-winning program, through a vibrant and ambitious series of phone banks and Labor Walks throughout south-central Wisconsin. Though Domestic Partner Benefits were not ultimately won in the 2007-2009 contract, the TAA was responsible in ensuring that the issue would be considered in the 2009-2011 budget. https://etf.wi.gov/publications/et2166/download?inline= https://etf.wi.gov/publications/et2166/download?inline= > As of Sept. 23, 2017, the State of Wisconsin no longer allows the establishment of new domestic partnerships under Chapter 40 of the Wisconsin statutes. > Carefully review this document if you are in a Chapter 40 domestic partnership established before September 23, 2017 because it contains important information about the benefit changes for established domestic partnerships. > If you are currently in a domestic partnership that was established under Chapter 40 between Jan. 1, 2010 and Sept. 22, 2017, your domestic partnership remains in force for the Wisconsin Retirement System retirement benefit administered by the Department of Employee Trust Funds. Your domestic partner is also still eligible to be the beneficiary of your life insurance policy, either through retention of your validly established domestic partnership, or through the submission of a Beneficiary Designation (ET-2320 or ET-2321) form. (note the date when domestic partnerships established would benefit from the benefits that spouses traditionally got - https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/40 https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/40 )
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
STEM grad students often have much bigger stipends than humanities grad students given that STEM is more well funded. It sounds like the union simply equalized things, although I’m not sure how that would work with DARPA or similar funding agencies, since RA salaries are taken out of grants (maybe just raise overhead to redistribute more funding to humanities, but grants have caps on overhead as well), so maybe just apply it to TA wages (then anyone in STEM would need to RA and avoid being a TA)? Anyways, it doesn’t take a leap to see how stipend equalization at a university would make it less appealing to those who would get less and more appealing to those who would get more. It is a zero sum problem, unfortunately.
- labcomputer 3y ago
  > STEM grad students often have much bigger stipends than humanities grad students given that STEM is more well funded. That was the opposite of my experience, actually.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    What school did you go to? In my grad school, there was very little money for humanities students, and they had to compete for TA positions. STEM money wasn't much of a problem, and most grad students could be RAs, and the opposite problem occurred (they were short on TAs).
starcraft2wol 3y ago
> uninterested in solidarity They always pitch the union as a way for you to get better pay and benefits. But the talk can suddenly shift to how you are a greedy opportunist if you actually take steps to increase your value.
6D794163636F756 3y ago
One of main uw campus, Madison, doesn't allow cs masters students. You are brought in as a PhD then allowed to leave when you've achieved your masters. This also causes attrition rates in those programs to skew low. Walked gutted a lot of funding for the programs and made it so the university couldn't find new sources of revenue. These factors definitely impacted the ability for students to finish phds

andirk 3y ago

> who have less options than them. So the humanities folks' priority is sculpting a union program to their specific needs. That also doesn't sound very "fight for the allowance of your peers". That's democracy though. Doesn't mean the right choice is made but that the voters pull the strings.

EatingWithForks 3y ago
I think it is objectively the right choice to enable people to build families if they're going to be in a program until their late 20s! This sounds ridiculous to me on its face-- why the hell wouldn't you support your maximally educated populace (getting doctorates) to have families? The 1st and 2nd year STEM kids (literally kids-- you can enter into a masters fresh out of college, so like 21-23 yrs old) who see the opportunity to try and organize to help their humanities peers start families and instead don't participate, exit to industry (an option humanities graduates probably don't have), and say nothing as a governer with a presidential campaign crushes their organizing hopes... a lack of solidarity with one's peers is exactly how it sounds to me.
- lmm 3y ago
  I'm darkly amused that you spend the first half of your comment talking down about how one group of students is "kids" compared to another and then in the second half complain about how those same people have "a lack of solidarity with [their] peers". Gee, I wonder why!
- xvedejas 3y ago
  Calling 22 year olds "kids" and then also saying they have a lack of solidarity with their older "peers" seems a bit insensitive to me. People having families is great, but if their benefits come from the expense of your own salary, that's asking for more than solidarity; that's asking for altruism.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

oatmeal1 3y ago

> I'm not even particularly fond of the humanities I just don't understand why you wouldn't fight for the allowance for your peers to start families, god damn! What the GP said was that instead of taking a cash option that would benefit all members, they chose benefits that only benefitted parents. It's reasonable to be angry that an alternative that would benefit all members wasn't chosen.

shagie 3y ago
https://taa-madison.org/history/ https://taa-madison.org/history/ > TAA activists in the Fall of 2008 also turned their eyes again toward attaining Domestic Partner Benefits for TAA members and UW employees. The TAA pushed on the issue, joining the LGBT Campus Center to table on Library Mall during their Coming Out Week, and creating a memorable Bascom Hill display. The TAA then networked into the University’s Domestic Partner Benefit Task Force, and arranged meetings with Governor Doyle’s Office and UW Chancellor Biddy Martin, while activists also spoke with nearly a thousand TAA members about the importance of winning Domestic Partner Benefits. The State Legislature, which in years past had meticulously denied state employees Domestic Partner Benefits, was poised for a sea change in the November elections. The TAA’s Political Education Committee launched an AFT COPE award-winning program, through a vibrant and ambitious series of phone banks and Labor Walks throughout south-central Wisconsin. Though Domestic Partner Benefits were not ultimately won in the 2007-2009 contract, the TAA was responsible in ensuring that the issue would be considered in the 2009-2011 budget. https://etf.wi.gov/publications/et2166/download?inline= https://etf.wi.gov/publications/et2166/download?inline= > As of Sept. 23, 2017, the State of Wisconsin no longer allows the establishment of new domestic partnerships under Chapter 40 of the Wisconsin statutes. > Carefully review this document if you are in a Chapter 40 domestic partnership established before September 23, 2017 because it contains important information about the benefit changes for established domestic partnerships. > If you are currently in a domestic partnership that was established under Chapter 40 between Jan. 1, 2010 and Sept. 22, 2017, your domestic partnership remains in force for the Wisconsin Retirement System retirement benefit administered by the Department of Employee Trust Funds. Your domestic partner is also still eligible to be the beneficiary of your life insurance policy, either through retention of your validly established domestic partnership, or through the submission of a Beneficiary Designation (ET-2320 or ET-2321) form. (note the date when domestic partnerships established would benefit from the benefits that spouses traditionally got - https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/40 https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/40 )

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

STEM grad students often have much bigger stipends than humanities grad students given that STEM is more well funded. It sounds like the union simply equalized things, although I’m not sure how that would work with DARPA or similar funding agencies, since RA salaries are taken out of grants (maybe just raise overhead to redistribute more funding to humanities, but grants have caps on overhead as well), so maybe just apply it to TA wages (then anyone in STEM would need to RA and avoid being a TA)? Anyways, it doesn’t take a leap to see how stipend equalization at a university would make it less appealing to those who would get less and more appealing to those who would get more. It is a zero sum problem, unfortunately.

labcomputer 3y ago
> STEM grad students often have much bigger stipends than humanities grad students given that STEM is more well funded. That was the opposite of my experience, actually.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  What school did you go to? In my grad school, there was very little money for humanities students, and they had to compete for TA positions. STEM money wasn't much of a problem, and most grad students could be RAs, and the opposite problem occurred (they were short on TAs).

starcraft2wol 3y ago

> uninterested in solidarity They always pitch the union as a way for you to get better pay and benefits. But the talk can suddenly shift to how you are a greedy opportunist if you actually take steps to increase your value.

6D794163636F756 3y ago

One of main uw campus, Madison, doesn't allow cs masters students. You are brought in as a PhD then allowed to leave when you've achieved your masters. This also causes attrition rates in those programs to skew low. Walked gutted a lot of funding for the programs and made it so the university couldn't find new sources of revenue. These factors definitely impacted the ability for students to finish phds