SRU faculty strikes
SLIPPERY ROCK — Faculty members at Slippery Rock University and 13 other state-owned universities hit the picket lines early this morning, after contract negotiations failed between their union and managers of the State System of Higher Education.
The strike, which had been looming for weeks after the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties last month set a hard deadline to have a contract in place, brought out hundreds of the 450 faculty members at SRU.
Those professors gathered at all of the 14 roads leading onto campus Wednesday, carrying signs and shouting slogans demanding a fair contract with the state. Some of the slogans called for the ousting of State System Chancellor Frank Brogan, underscoring what has become a very contentious and public contract negotiation.
“This is the worst that I’ve seen since we’ve been here,” said Glenn Utsch, a music professor at SRU who specializes in piano and has taught at the university for 20 years.
Today professors at SRU took issue with what they said were perceptions that the strike was a product of greed on their part. Philosophy professor Andrew Colvin, a faculty member at SRU for 12 years, said he and his colleagues didn’t want it to come to this.
“I don’t want to be out here,” Colvin said. “My salary stops, my health insurance stops. I have kids. I don’t want to send them to school in a state that is 47th or 48th in the nation in funding higher education.”
Pennsylvania’s annual contribution to its state-owned universities and colleges had fallen precipitously during the administration of former Gov. Tom Corbett. It’s ticked up slightly since Corbett was replaced by Gov. Tom Wolf, but still sits at near-historic lows.
“I’m frustrated that people think this is about our raises,” said Cerrick Pitard, a professor of English at SRU.
Pitard said key issues for him and other professors revolved around treatment of adjunct and part-time faculty at state universities, where he said they receive poor health benefits.
Some contract proposals offered by the system have also included increases in such faculty members’ course loads and other duties — something APSCUF members have objected to on the grounds that it would limit professional advancement opportunities and decrease the quality of education.
“It’s not about our money,” he said. “It’s really about getting good faculty here that don’t want to leave.”
Students also were out on the picket lines today, and some said they didn’t feel administrators at SRU were handling their concerns properly.
Many students said they were unsure what to do regarding off-campus internships like student teaching, or whether they would be disciplined for picketing with their professors instead of going to class, as SRU instructed students to do.
“I don’t feel the support that I should feel from our administration,” said Hopi Myers-Arrigoni, a first-year graduate student in English. “It feels like this is just being reduced to money, and it’s not about that at all. I’m trying to make the world a better place. That’s why I’m here.”
Amanda Ciarkowski, another first-year graduate student on the picket lines, said she was disappointed that SRU administrators hadn’t done more.
She said students hadn’t received any e-mails except those sent out by state system managers, and she and others were unsure how to handle off-campus internships and other work-study jobs.
Ciarkowski dismissed the university’s directive to go to class today, saying she didn’t see the point.
“I’m not going to go sit in an empty classroom when I could be here, fighting for my education,” she said.
SRU President Cheryl Norton was not available this morning for an interview.
SRU spokesman Robb King said that all students should continue to report to on- and off-campus work-study jobs and internships, and otherwise continue to “fulfill their obligations as students.”
