Hundreds of faculty and staff across Columbia, Barnard, and Teachers College have signed onto a strike, pledging to “only do work that directly serves students” until the New York Police Department is removed from campus, faculty members announced in a Friday morning press conference.
www.columbiaspectator.com
I've worked on the faculty in all three colleges, so I suppose that on strike is where I would be today, if I were still there. There was no possibility for online classes back in 1970, when I was still at Ohio State, although we did meet at the homes of some of the professors for graduate seminars, during our campus disturbances. Campus unrest was over by the time I was hired to work at Columbia.
Before I was hired by the Columbia Corporation, we had a similar situation at Ohio State University, where occupation by the Ohio National Guard on campus got very intense after the Kent State shootings. I was a graduate teaching assistant in 1970 when the faculty went on strike. It was literally impossible to conduct teaching in classrooms at that time, so the faculty voted to strike, as well. in the Spring of 1970. I remember going into the classroom and writing "On Strike" on the blackboard, as the class was called off. After that, things got so bad on campus that they were forced to call off classes and shut down the university, much to the dismay of the administration and the governor (who had illegally declared martial law, although everyone thought he had the authority at the time).
I would still maintain that campus unrest back then was far more serious and disruptive than it is now. Polarization in the general population was also worse. My roommate had a brother attending Ohio State at the time. He told me that his conservative father felt that they should have shot more students, even though his son liked to wear the same buckskin jacket that one of the slain students was wearing. I had another friend who left for Canada rather than be drafted, and his father called the FBI to have his son arrested. (Of course, that wasn't going to happen before he had actually done anything to evade the draft.) When I went onto campus during occupation by the National Guard troops, we had to show ID and were forbidden to congregate in groups of more than 3 people. The right to free speech was suspended, as were other civil rights. Months later, a court determined that the governor did not have the right to declare martial law, so "never mind".
