Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 13, 1998)
CONTACTING US NEWSROOM: ADDRESS: (541)346-5511 Oregon Daily Emerald E-MAIL P.O.BOX 3159 odeGoregcn uoregon edu Eugene. Oregon 97403 ONUNE EDITION: www uoregon edu/-ode EDITOR IN CHIEF Sarah Kickler EDITORIAL EDITOR Mike Schmierfcach NIGHT EDITORS Sarah Kickler Teri Meeuwsen University should place more value in GTFs After agreeing to a raise for summer GTFs, the University promptly reduced the hours allocated to summer positions t seems that the administration needs to go back to school. Summer school. | According to an article in Thursday’s -A- Emerald, University administrators are once again using graduate teaching fellows to save money. This time, the school is reducing hour estimates for GTFs who won a pay raise last fall. When the Graduate Teaching Fellows Fed eration negotiated its contract with the Uni versity in the fall, the two sides agreed to boost summer pay for GTFs to the same level assis tants earn during the rest of the year. When the GTFF received a preliminary indication of the hours summer GTFs will be offered, how ever, the agreement appeared to have shat tered. The University will hold to its pledge to pay the higher wage, but many departments are of fering fewer hours, apparently as a way to off set the higher cost of labor. Graduate students are sent offers that desig nate the full-time equivalent value of an assist - antship. Students are then paid based on that FTE allotment rather them actual hours. By re ducing the FTE estimated for many positions, the University is assuming that summer GTFs do less work. The Emerald story quotes Maggie Morris, vice provost for research and graduate educa tion, as saying, “The University takes the posi tion that summer is different.” It seems ad ministrators have been too busy vacationing and soliciting corporate funds for new build ings to notice how wrong that claim is. If University officials were to check in on summer school, they would find that summer classes cover the same amount of material in a condensed time period. Students earn four credits in four- or eight-week sessions instead of the usual eleven weeks. Presumably, if a class is worth the same number of credits as during the year, it re quires a similar amount of work from both stu dents and instructors. If the University honest ly believes summer classes carried with them less work, it should reduce the number of credits allocated. Instead, the school is playing more cost-cut ting games with a union that represents one of the most underappreciated aspects of the Uni versity. Reducing the number of hours cuts GTF pay, but it also risks dropping graduate students below the minimum number of hours for union membership. That could pre vent GTFs from filing grievances to complain about inaccurate FTE estimates and could even prevent some GTFs from receiving tu ition waivers, the most crucial part of any of fer. While inexcusably harsh, the University’s action is not unusual. Fair treatment of GTFs has never been a priority for higher education administrators. Consider the past two years: Student groups have lobbied hard for a tu ition freeze without opposition from adminis trators. These efforts met with success for this year, locking in-state tuition in place. Faculty have, justly, complained about low salaries and have received donations and state funding to attempt to adjust those salaries to match national averages. AN EMERALD EDITORIAL In addition, administrators have solicited funding for a number of programs and build ing improvements, including the controver sial donations from Phil Knight that were ear marked primarily for the new law school building, faculty chairs and a salary increase for the University president. Meanwhile, graduate students have not re ceived a tuition freeze. As the cost of attending school has risen, the GTFF managed to negoti ate a slight pay increase in the fall. Even that is now being offset by reduced hours that are jus tifiable only by the logic of the bottom line. It's poor logic at best. While the need to as sist undergraduate students and faculty is clear, graduate students are also a crucial as pect of the University. Reasonable funding of fers are a key part of recruiting exceptional graduate students. The arrival of those stu dents, in turn, helps improve research and the University’s image as well as placing more skilled GTFs in the classroom. The presence of a GTF union on campus is an important part of ensuring graduate stu dents receive fair treatment from the Universi ty. Such unions are present on only a few cam puses around the nation, although organizing efforts are taking place at many institutions. If the GTFF is going to be effective at pro tecting graduate student interests and indi rectly the long-term interests of the school, it deserves more respect from administrators. Reducing summer hours is a clear violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of fall contract nego tiations. Perhaps the people whose hours need close scrutiny are University administrators. If they aren’t busy, we could certainly send them to summer school. Let’s just hope their grades depend on those same overworked and underpaid GTFs the University is manipulating once again. This editorial represents the opinion of the Emer ald editorial board. Responses may be sent to ode@oregon.uoregon.edu. TO PROPOSALS FOR A NON PARTISAN LEGISLATURE: According to a story in The Register-Guard on April 6, Springfield Democrat Lee Beyer plans to introduce a bill in the Oregon Senate that would ren der all Oregon legislative races non-partisan. Just as many local government races are between candidates with no officially des ignated party affiliation, Oregon legislative seats would now be filled by names without a party platform—or agenda—behind them. There are problems with this proposal, but they aren’t the ones suggested by Republican Lynn Snodgrass, die Oregon House majority leader, in die ar ticle. Snodgrass is In fact com pletely wrong In her arguments, but that isnl unusual for her. She said the same partisan bat tles would continue, but they would be between liberals and conservatives instead of Democ rats and Republicans. What both Snodgrass and Beyer miss is the fundamental problem with partisan politics in the state and nation: We have too few parties, not too many. Party platforms represent a way for candidates to run based on issues rather than personali ty. Eliminating those platforms would make candidates' person alities even more important in the elections process. The origin of partisan bicker ing is largely the similarity, rather than the differences, be tween the two major parties. Both stage elaborate battles over minor issues in an attempt to provide a political dichotomy that simply does not exist. If the system included several parties, there would be a larger distinction between the views of each party. The groups would also have to form coali tions and compromise on is sues because no group would hoid control over the legisla ture. One proposal that was being circulated for potential inclusion on the ballot would have institut ed a system similar to that used in many European nations. Un der the plan, voters would cast their ballots for political parties rather than individuals, The par ties would have a list of candi dates who pledged support to the party platform. Voters would thus decide based on policy ratherthan personality. Addi tionally, the plan would allow many parties to pain strength because legislative allocation would be based upon the per centage of ballots each group re ceived. There are many problems with this idea, but it would move the state in a positive direction. Beyer's proposal, despite being weli-intentioned, would increase the superficiality of campaigns without doing much to solve partisan bickering.
