Strike-torn

Returning to school but not quite... The part-time faculty union continues its strike, as its members consider the "last, best and final" offer peremptorily made by the administration last week, and most of us full-time faculty are withholding our labor too in solidarity. The union is advising its members to vote against the offer, so classes may be suspended for a while. Not that we have a while: the fall semester ends two weeks from tomorrow! There are frenzied online discussions of how to ensure students finish the semester without "crossing the picket line," punctuated every so often by someone observing that this kind of chaos and uncertainty is precisely the intended consequence of a strike. Mitigating it through workarounds would lessen the strike's pressure - and so likely make it longer. The university leadership has been incommunicado but, finally realizing it's a crisis, is descending from the ether, the president assuring us that he is confident we can make it through any challenge so long as we stick together and avoid divisiveness. The less platitudinous provost acknowledges "We have faced a period of tumult and discord that feels to me like the fabric of our university has been torn apart, but hopefully not irreparably."