By: Dr. Bill Buckland

Dr. Bill Buckland
Sun, 15 Nov 2015 23:39:54 +0000

Thank you for standing up, being counted, and demanding action beyond the trajectory of an embarrassing and shameful status quo.

In thinking about who’s experienced discrimination on campus, please include in your consideration and advocacy all of the ex-janitors, ex-blue collar workers, and other university employees who were able to scratch out a middle-class living for themselves before being downsized and outsourced. They will not be marching with you because they’ve been dismissed over the years. Please, also, include in your consideration and activism those persons who replaced them — too vulnerable to dare speak up, violently underpaid and under constant threat of layoff.

Take a look a the person who picks up your trash and cleans your toilets. That job used to be done by someone who was paid better, could take classes for free, had employer-provided health care, and wasn’t having to prepare, daily, for losing their job because the university could find a contractor who’d take a nickel per hour less. The genuine discrimination, including being rendered invisible to us, that these people experience is equally deplorable, but underpaid, vulnerable employees cannot represent themselves.

Recent events are a valuable reminder that STUDENTS ARE POWERFUL. To embrace and integrate those equally valuable, and largely more voiceless, persons would be a significant acknowledgment that class disparities, too, are endemic to the university — not the “vitally important role that universities play in confronting the issues of racism, intolerance and insensitivity in American society,” but rather the vital role that universities play in reproducing and reinforcing those problems. To embrace and integrate those persons in your struggle is to demonstrate that your moral “umbrella” is not limited to the student experience but to the total spectrum of those who are getting screwed, daily, to keep our house in order so that we can turn our minds to other matters.