OPINION • 17
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2016
Supporting CAS Students can make a difference in the contract negotiations of professors
GIOVANNI GUIGA OPINION COLUMNIST
Students attending Laurier will almost certainly be taught, at some point, by a part-time or contract faculty professor. I bet this number has dropped now that their collective agreement with Laurier has ended on August 31, 2016. As a result, there have been ongoing discussions between Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty Association (WLUFA) and Laurier’s senior administration for the last four months. The outcome of these negotiations will have an effect on us as Laurier students and for the livelihoods of the Contract Academic Staff (CAS). It is important that we, the students, must become engaged in these discussions.
If we are engaged, we can provide a sense of accountability. This ensures a better scrutiny of WLUFA. WLUFA represents all faculty at Laurier, thus it includes both full-time and contract faculty. This is problematic, predominantly because a union has an inherent problem. The interests of one group, in this case the full-time faculty, benefit directly from ensuring part-time faculty get a smaller slice of the pie. This is not to say that WLUFA is actively trying to ensure negotiations are not fruitful, but rather to highlight potential conflicts that arise within the union. I think this conflict further arises from finite number of allocated dollars for salaries and benefits for all professors on campus with one group (full-time) benefitting substantially more than the other (CAS). This predisposition could manifest in discrete ways during the negotiations. If WLUFA must make a decision of which group needs
FANI HSIEH/GRAPHICS EDITOR
are to be prioritized, full-time or part-time, they are going to choose full-time, especially when their negotiations are set to occur next. This internal difficulty is where students must take action. We can hold WLUFA accountable, ensuring the demands of contract faculty are being fought for during the negotiations, thus providing support to a consistently undervalued part of Laurier. Many of you will have seen the contract academic staff office
posters around campus. This poster campaign was to highlight “the lack of typical and appropriate office space for contract faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University,” said WLUFA’s Facebook page. This campaign is important because it showcases the negative effect a lack of resources can have for contract staff and our student experience. We, as students, should be concerned with ensuring contract faculty have more resources, such as consistent office
that respect and inclusivity are great ideals—just not when dealing with conservative Christians, apparently. To illustrate this hypocrisy, I could analyze any number of slanders levied against Christianity. Perhaps the most enduring progressive myth directed against Christians is that they are irrational. Dismissing out of hand the monumental genius of figures such as St. Augustine, St. Anselm, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Paul II and Blessed John Henry Newman, anti-theists from Freud to Feuerbach have argued against the rationality of religion. God, they say, is merely an idealized projection of the ego, an opiate-dispensing sky-fairy
FANI HSIEH/GRAPHICS EDITOR
Type-casting Christians MITCHELL KOOH OPINION COLUMNIST
Vegetarianism is for evil people – or at least stupid ones. It’s a violent ideology that perpetuates hatred and intolerance across the globe. Vegetarianism is for the immoral and the uneducated. Really, it’s not vegetarians’ fault. They’ve just been indoctrinated by insidious agents—the school system, the media, the usual boogeymen.
Regardless, these sad, deluded, ignorant nut-jobs need to be put in their place. Off in a padded room, ideally. Everything I’ve said so far, of course, is absurd. So why is it acceptable to say the same things about conservative Christians? If you don’t believe me, just look at the statistics. According to a study conducted earlier this year by the evangelical polling firm Barna Group, most atheists view religious people, Christians in particular, as extremist. A 2007 Barna poll suggested more of the same: Christians are increasingly seen as fanatical, violent, homophobic, irrational and
hypocritical. These stats shouldn’t surprise anyone. They’re borne out of everyday experience, especially on university campuses. In the first few weeks of school, I’ve already heard God referred to as an imaginary friend, the crusades as a barbaric genocide and the papacy as a corrupt invention. The rejection of Christian doctrine is sexy at Wilfrid Laurier University. Just to be clear, I’m not saying Christians need safe spaces or trigger warnings to protect their feelings. That being said, the progressive attitudes that are so popular among university students claim
Meaningful dialogue is the hallmark of a quality education, but opinions need to be supported by reason.
designed to placate our fears and validate our ignorance. Like all myths, these accusations are grounded in a kernel of truth. The authors of a 2013 social study observed an inverse relationship between religiosity and intelligence, but the vast majority of people don’t seriously believe certain races are inherently ‘smarter’ than others. Obviously, that would be dangerously naïve. Why, then, do certain groups perform worse on traditional indicators of
space, because this directly affects their ability to maintain contact and assist with students in their courses. If I want a more private or a more professional setting to speak with my professor over academic matters, I cannot effectively do this in a room that may have multiple other people. Students also need to stand with contract faculty in the push for one-year contracts. While contract faculty are hired on a per-course basis, this precarious situation hurts students. Professors that are able to have a sense of better job security are not only going to be happier instructors, they can also begin thinking long-term, to the benefit of their students. If a contract professor teaches the same course, they are able to make more modifications and improvements over time without having to worry about whether they are even going to be teaching the same course in terms to come. These contract negotiations give our student voice a chance to take charge of our education and ensure the livelihood of some great professors. This can all be done by ensuring that WLUFA enters these negotiations with a renewed resolve; a strong show of support by students would help in some part to achieve this.
intelligence? The answer lies in stereotyping and bias. A 2015 study published in the Social Psychological and Personality Science Journal demonstrated that negative stereotypes associated with religion resulted in sub-par Christian enrollment and marks in the sciences. The authors then concluded that differences between the performance of Christian and non-Christian students disappeared. Claude Steele, the social psychologist, has described this phenomenon as ‘stereotype threat.’ In his own work, Steele argues that stereotype threat explains the scarcity of women in mathematics and the underperformance of minority students in general. Meaningful dialogue is the hallmark of a quality education, but opinions need to be supported by reason. For example, some people may challenge the assertion that discrimination based on religion is objectively wrong. That’s fine, but show me why. Some people may question the methodologies of the various studies mentioned above or criticize my interpretations of those studies. That’s fine, but show me where I went wrong. Some people may think orthodox Christianity discourages intelligent thought, while others may argue that I wrongly conflated progressivism with secularism or Christianity with conservatism. That’s fine, but show me why that’s the case. There are lots of nasty people in the world who simply hate religion. That’s ok. Fanatics exist in every generation. What really defies reason is the hypocrisy of aggressive secularism and the condescending progressive anti-theists who seem to think that their crap doesn’t stink. And boy have they been dumping on Christians.