Anyway, folks out there can help by contacting U of T alumni they might know who might be sympathetic. Ditto Harvard folks since Prichard is leaving for a post at the Harvard Law School. Not that Harvard gives a hoot, but.....
To: UTGEA-L at listserv.utoronto.ca <UTGEA-L at listserv.utoronto.ca> Date: Thursday, January 27, 2000 12:44 PM Subject: Letter from Margaret Atwood
An outstanding development in our struggle for a fair resolution to the negotiations with the university administration: below is a letter we have just this moment received from Margaret Atwood.
We want to ask each of you to circulate this letter as widely as you can.
This message is being sent xc to our union office. Union people: we await confirmation from you that you will contact the respective departmental union representatives and ask each of them to post it on their graduate-student listservs, and for each of those reps to also contact their faculty's listservs. To all representatives: pls keep us up to date on such progress, so we can keep a record of it: send the list of your posting addresses to <adam.budd at utoronto.ca> with subject "Atwood letter". We want every administrator, student, and faculty member at the university to have a copy of this letter. This cannot be done efficiently unless we have a fairly accurate record of its dissemination.
We are awaiting a faxed signed copy of the letter from Ms Atwood: we will then photocopy it and circulate it widely to the press. Please let us know if any of you have ideas about whom else should receive it: we will be happy to have more fax numbers.
Atwood's assistant has sent the message directly to Pritchard this morning.
Also, we would like volunteers to do the task of researching more illustrious alumni of the university to whom we should solicit letters. Now that Margaret Atwood has voiced her support, we must contact more people. Do let us know if you would volunteer to help with that contacting process.
In solidarity!
Adam
Ann
Adam Budd Ann Martin Doctoral Candidates Department of English University of Toronto
If you put Information Committee in the subject heading, it will get to one of our "press agents." Or you could just ask me a couple of questions, since I'm a member of the sub-info-committee known as "Solidarity." It might be better to try to hook up with Mikael Swayze though, since he's the chair of the local. Of course Kelley seems to have most of the details too...
By way of an update, the Labour Board ordered the union and the administration back to the table... about 36 hours ago. They've been locked in a room together ever since. I'm completely *smitten* by the supportive responses we've received in the last few days - students from Yale, Harvard... from the Canadian Autoworkers Union (who've been out there every day for the last couple of days handing out sandwiches, coffee, hot chocolate and soup) the UofT Faculty Association who launched the *successful* lawsuit that shaved the teeth of the admin's threat to restruct courses by Feb 4 (which would have eliminated all 2400 jobs!), letters from alumni, like Maggie Atwood... support from students in unions all around the world, Canadian Steel, the student federation... We're going to win this fight. The administration depends on their TAs, and we're demonstrating through our withdrawal of labour and our direct action, that the university simply cannot function. But there is nothing to celebrate here. The administration has illustrated, beyond reasonable doubt, their malevolence. They have absolutely *no* interest in democratic and public education. Their wildcard tactics, punishing of individual members of the union, and their manipulation of the undergrads is simply diabolical. We don't just want a raise, we want to raze the administration. $8000 for a donut shaped ice rink in front of Simcoe Hall (the admin building). "We'll burn your fucking ice rink!"
ken