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Question about where the TAs will picket if there's a strike

 
Old 11-02-2009 at 10:41 AM   #151
sew12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kathy2 View Post
I'm getting emails from my TAs telling me to follow the CUPE blog and give support to the strike.

Not impressed...
Well, if they believe in the strike they have every right to ask their students for support during this time. However you obviously have every right to disagree with the strike and not support them.

Personally I don't agree with the strike but I won't harbor any ill will towards either of my TAs who choose to strike. I have 3 TAs this term and I think 2 of the 3 will be striking rather than scabbing and that's their prerogative. I just hope their union will speed up the process and not have this strike go on for too long. I already feel my education being disrupted by the cancellation of tutorials this week and one of my Professors feelings on the strike and I don't appreciate it.
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Old 11-02-2009 at 11:30 AM   #152
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sew12 View Post
Well, if they believe in the strike they have every right to ask their students for support during this time. However you obviously have every right to disagree with the strike and not support them.

Personally I don't agree with the strike but I won't harbor any ill will towards either of my TAs who choose to strike. I have 3 TAs this term and I think 2 of the 3 will be striking rather than scabbing and that's their prerogative. I just hope their union will speed up the process and not have this strike go on for too long. I already feel my education being disrupted by the cancellation of tutorials this week and one of my Professors feelings on the strike and I don't appreciate it.
I don't care how my TAs personally feel about the strike.
But I don't think they should be emailing their tutorials to ask for support and telling students to read the (extremely biased) CUPE blog.

As an added bonus, this TA doesn't use BCC so everyone can see everyone else's email address. That is so annoying.

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Old 11-02-2009 at 11:51 AM   #153
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Not using BCC is the most annoying part of the whole thing.

Even if you don't care you really don't think they have a right to ask students for their support? Students don't have to support them but I don't see a problem with them asking.

However you make a decent point about the CUPE blog. Their message should perhaps be more of a get informed about the strike kind and not a get informed on CUPE's stance only. Its important to look at the whole picture, not just one side.
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Old 11-02-2009 at 11:58 AM   #154
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sew12 View Post
Not using BCC is the most annoying part of the whole thing.

Even if you don't care you really don't think they have a right to ask students for their support? Students don't have to support them but I don't see a problem with them asking.

However you make a decent point about the CUPE blog. Their message should perhaps be more of a get informed about the strike kind and not a get informed on CUPE's stance only. Its important to look at the whole picture, not just one side.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think they should be emailing their tutorials about this. It's kind of uncomfortable. I don't think they should be emailing us about it, to rally for support. That's not what they have my email address for.
Old 11-02-2009 at 12:05 PM   #155
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I think it's important to email your students and give them the information from both sides. I still think a lot of people are generally uninformed about the whole situation.

As long as you post both sides, what is the harm in emailing your students?
Old 11-02-2009 at 12:07 PM   #156
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Our Luck View Post
I think it's important to email your students and give them the information from both sides. I still think a lot of people are generally uninformed about the whole situation.

As long as you post both sides, what is the harm in emailing your students?
Well I think one of the issues is the TAs who e-mailed the above posted weren't giving information on both sides, just telling students to read CUPE's highly biased blog.
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Old 11-02-2009 at 12:07 PM   #157
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Our Luck View Post
I think it's important to email your students and give them the information from both sides. I still think a lot of people are generally uninformed about the whole situation.

As long as you post both sides, what is the harm in emailing your students?
She's not telling us both sides. She didn't really say anything other than "We're on strike. Read this blog to stay updated" and gave a link to the CUPE blog.
Old 11-02-2009 at 11:09 PM   #158
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stevennevets View Post
show me that most undergrads can live off of bursaries alone and I'll admit that grad students should be able to live off of a TA-ship alone.
To emphasize the point: This is only dealing with students demonstrating financial need (since that's who bursaries and TA-ships are designed for).

Given that often times undergrads get OSAP as a means of support, and more often than not a TA-ship prevents graduate students from getting a significant amount of OSAP, it really is an "Apples and Oranges" scenario.

In addition, undergrads are (typically) under age 25, and are far more likely to inherit benefits from their parents (such as dental insurance, or various types of CPP, survivor's benefits, etc). Grad students are frequently too old to receive such benefits from their parents.

Quote:
in fact, both of my sisters, after graduating their undergrads, took a couple of years to work, make some money to afford grad school. one is currently attending the other has graduated grad school, both worked and SAVED MONEY in order to afford the expense of more school.
I'm not going to tell McMaster how to conduct its business, but based on my offer of acceptance alone (and I'm sure I'm no exception) it seemed as though throwing a couple grand at a student to 'reserve' their research is a common practice.

I don't know your sisters or where they've applied/gotten accepted, or what programs they're in (not to mention their financial situation, if they're married and have children, etc.), but research potential has a whole lot to say with how much support you get...regrettably, moreso than teaching ability.

Take home point: As I've said in another thread, "I just don't have enough money right now" is an unacceptable reason for someone not to get an education and go to do their undergraduate studies...not everywhere in the world is as fortunate as we are, but we have OSAP in place (albeit far from a perfect system) to minimize the instances of "I just don't have enough money."

We have the luxury here: if we have the brains and the grades to get accepted, we go.


Why is this all of a sudden different for grad students? It really shouldn't be...if we have the brains and demonstrate the potential, we go. And since the burden doesn't fall on OSAP, it falls on McMaster.

Quote:
we all understand that as grad students you have the added finacial burden of undergrad debts, but I have never seen anywhere that McMaster promised grad students financial security, meaning basically a free education, where all the money comes from bursaries and TA-ships and goes straight back to Mac.
That's because we sign contracts and those typically aren't publicized...my tuition is completely covered by my TA-ship, as per my agreement with McMaster. Quite frankly, if Mac didn't agree to give me enough financial support to at least fully pay my tuition, I would have gone somewhere that did. Mac understood this, and so they roped me in.

U of T for instance, offered me more than double what McMaster did, in my offer of acceptance.

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Old 11-02-2009 at 11:20 PM   #159
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kathy2 View Post
She's not telling us both sides. She didn't really say anything other than "We're on strike. Read this blog to stay updated" and gave a link to the CUPE blog.
You could interpret this charitably as just "if you want to know when we'll go back to work (or other similar things), read this blog".

She may not be pushing a CUPE spin. To be honest, until I started reading MacInsiders I didn't really know how much information McMaster was giving out to people (I obviously don't read the Daily News daily). I probably would have pointed my students to the blog for info about the strike, not necessarily meaning that they should take CUPE's stance or support me, just that it would have information about pickets and when and how the strike would end.

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Old 11-03-2009 at 03:57 AM   #160
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kathy2 View Post
I'm getting emails from my TAs telling me to follow the CUPE blog and give support to the strike.

Not impressed...
This has to violate some sort of policy re: what your email can be used for. Usually when someone has access to your private information, they are only supposed to use it for a narrowly defined legitimate purpose.

TA's do not have our emails to draw us into CUPE's fight. If you're "friends" with your students over Facebook/ have their email on your personal account etc. then by all means go ahead and seek support, but I would encourage TA's to make sure they aren't violating the letter or the intent of any privacy rules or acceptable use policies by using privileged information to contact students about a non-professional matter.

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Old 11-03-2009 at 07:02 AM   #161
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kathy2 View Post

As an added bonus, this TA doesn't use BCC so everyone can see everyone else's email address. That is so annoying.
Not using blind CC's is not only annoying it's an invasion of your privacy!!!

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Old 11-03-2009 at 02:15 PM   #162
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hope13 View Post
You could interpret this charitably as just "if you want to know when we'll go back to work (or other similar things), read this blog".

She may not be pushing a CUPE spin. To be honest, until I started reading MacInsiders I didn't really know how much information McMaster was giving out to people (I obviously don't read the Daily News daily). I probably would have pointed my students to the blog for info about the strike, not necessarily meaning that they should take CUPE's stance or support me, just that it would have information about pickets and when and how the strike would end.
She had already sent us an email beforehand saying "Tutorials will be cancelled, so the prof will talk about this assignment in lecture and I'll hand these assignments back when the strike is done, etc etc" - which is perfectly fine.

Then she sent another one later telling us to read the blog - which was unnecessary. Who knows, maybe some students replied to her first email saying "What's going on? What happened?" and that was her reply. Regardless, it was still unnecessary.

I don't think she was encouraging us to be informed. She was definately trying to get support for CUPE.
Old 11-03-2009
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