Friends & Collegiality

I am not a union flag waver (contrary to what many in the FCCJ community may think). I do not think of the union as a panacea for all our problems. But, after 30 years of teaching for the college I know this: "collegiality" (especially as defined by the FCCJ management dictionary) has not, is not, and will never be an avenue for much needed change in the way we conduct the business of running a college.

For 30 long years I have fought the good fight. I have served on a hundred committees; I have served repeatedly as a Senator, as a Senatorial Secretary for two years and continue to serve as a standby alternative for my past and present Senators. And in those 30 years of trying to communicate and work with the powers that be, I have almost always come away with one, inescapable conclusion. Decisions, for which these committees, task forces, workshops, advisory boards have been charged, had been made long before the committees were formed!

Over the years two things have happened to me. And both slipped up on me without my being aware of it. One is I became old. And the other is I grew weary, as Sisyphus has certainly grown weary, of fighting a hopeless cause. Over the last couple of years, I have ceased serving on committees, and not only because they were a waste of time but because increasingly I came away feeling denigrated and foolish at the same time.

Over the last couple of years, after decades of trying, trying, trying to be collegial, I have gotten harshly critical of myself for forgetting a basic truth of this college. FTE and profit are our only true masters of this college. Good teaching conditions have always been subordinate to our real purpose.

There are those of you who have strong anti-union sentiments. I consider many of you both close personal friends and among our finest professors. Believe it or not, I share deeply your concerns about voting union.

I would say this to those of us who fear the union as if it were some giant, alien invasion of fat, beef- eating, cigar-chomping, bat-wielding bullies who do not know or care who we are.

Call me naïve, call me a Romantic, but I believe the union is, and will be, us. It will be you. It will be me and a whole host of other proven, dedicated, self-sacrificing, professional faculty who try each day to be the best people and the best teachers they can be. The union is not and will never be "Them" or "It".

The union will be us, and if ever, like Gregor Samsa, we wake after a night of unpleasant dreams and find ourselves transformed into gigantic insects, we can end our existence with the flick of a pen on a ballot.

—Fred C. Reynolds, English, KC