AAUP Rally @ CCSU 10/29/30
My
name is Gil Gigliotti, and, with a brand-spankin’-new PhD in hand, I arrived at
CCSU in the fall of 1992. They were troubled financial times then; no raises at
all for at least the first three years.
In fact, my wife and I even qualified for a low-income mortgage program
here in New Britain! Over the years, there have been wage freezes, and
furloughs, and give-backs, and I’ve even had good offers to go elsewhere. I haven’t gone anywhere else because I have become
quite fond of my adopted hometown of New Britain and have grown to love and
respect CCSU -- my students (current and alumni), my colleagues from across the
campus, and the mission we have for all of Connecticut.
Today,
in honor of my current ENG 213 students, I was going to serenade ConnSCU
President Ojakian with a rendition of Randy Newman’s “Mr. President, Have Pity
on the Working Man,” with such verses as,
We’re not asking
for you to love us
You may place
yourself high above us
Mr. President,
have pity on the working man!
But
I can’t sing or play the piano, and, more importantly, we are not asking for anyone’s
pity.
What
we seek today are fairness and respect for our students, our faculty and staff,
our university, and our fellow citizens – a fairness and respect that seem oddly
lacking in the Board of Regents’ initial contract proposals (not to mention the
misbegotten Transform 2020).
What
we seek is help in running our university the way a university needs to be run
so that it REMAINS a university – that is, a universe of learning, and
teaching, and researching, and creating, and building!
Now
I’ve written a little something, entitled “DISS-ed,” on which I’ll need your help!
When
I say “Dear Board of Regents,” you yell out DON’T DISS CCSU!
DISS-ed (Dear
Board of Regents)
It
would be easy to be DISS-heartened,
but
the students, alumni, and faculty of CCSU have too much heart.
Dear
Board of Regents, DON’T DISS CCSU!
It
would be easy to get DISS-couraged,
but
the students, alumni, and faculty of CCSU display remarkable acts of courage every day.
Dear
Board of Regents, DON’T DISS CCSU!
It’s
very tempting to DISS-trust each other,
but
real negotiation requires mutual trust.
Dear
Board of Regents, DON’T DISS CCSU!
and
finally
We
must never DISS-engage,
for true education
(that is,
learning, and teaching, and researching, and creating, and building)
demands our engagement
with each other,
with our cities,
with our state,
with our nation,
with our world!
Dear
Board of Regents, DON’T DISS CCSU!
DON’T
DISS CCSU!
DON’T
DISS CCSU!
DON’T
DISS CCSU!
DON’T
DISS CCSU!
DON’T
DISS CCSU!
DON’T
DISS CCSU!
****************************************************************
Author's Note:
I should make clear that I'm very aware of what Ben Franklin wrote in his Autobiography about the great effect the Great Awakening preacher George Whitefield had on his audiences and how much he hurt himself by publishing his sermons:
I am of opinion if he had never written any thing, he would have
left behind him a much more numerous and important sect,
and his reputation might in that case have been still growing,
even after his death, as there being nothing of his writing
on which to found a censure and give him a lower character,
his proselytes would be left at liberty to feign for him as
great a variety of excellence as their enthusiastic admiration
might wish him to have possessed.
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