On Why University Worker and University Work: A conversation with student activists from Canada

The following was written in response to questions sent to us by comrades in the Student and Education Worker Industrial Organizing Committee of the Toronto Industrial Workers of the World. They also run a newsletter/blog, called ClassRoom. The document was prepared in May of 2015. We did this as a stocktaking exercise for The University Worker since it started in November 2013.

1. Can you tell us a little bit about your project and the organization behind it (when your paper was founded, who is involved, how the editorial process works, etc)?

We are a group of about 20; all work in the university in various capacities; some of us even have more than one institutionally defined role (being both a student as well as an ad-hoc teacher/research assistant). We come from somewhat varied political experiences, although all were broadly part of the Left spectrum. We all had some engagements in university politics, especially anti-fee hike struggles, anti-sexual harassment struggles, or struggles around the ‘undemocratic decision-making’ at the universities. Some were part of student wings of CPs in India, some were autonomous. For some university-level struggles led to disillusionment with the transient nature of victories or shallowness of reform, and a sense of the overall impossibility of real change in the university through isolated struggles.

An exchange between a university professor and a University Worker member’s response

Professor:

Thank you for sending me four issues of the periodical, The University Worker, that you and your comrades have put together, edited and published, quite obviously with great care and dedication, and many apologies for the delay on my part in responding to the substance of the same. As it happens, I have, even now, been able to read through only the first two issues of the periodical, and my comments, such as they are, pertain to the contents of the two of them alone.