The Campus Workers Question

With the time for renewing campus labor contracts upon us, the usual sympathetic suspects have sprung into action across campus, most notably Students Organizing United with Labor (SOUL). More interesting, and certainly more relevant to the discussion from a factual standpoint, is the smaller contingent of students questioning the rather boisterous claims of the Union/SOUL coalition. By way of background, the union rejected an initial offer in the 2-3% gradual increase range, and then again narrowly voted to reject an offer of 3.5% over the next three years.

In a recent set of dueling editorials blazened across the soiled pages of the Chicago Maroon, the attitude of both sides makes itself subtly, but openly, apparent. Senior Andrew Lees wrote to question the validity of the "4%" demand coming from student groups, and he raises a number of strong points:

The CPI grew at an average annual rate of 2.53 percent in the 12 months ending in October 2007. Inflation measured by the Core CPI—so named because it excludes energy and food, the two most volatile components of the price level—was at 2.37 percent, well below the Union’s 4-percent mark. Both of these numbers, you will note, are below the University’s three percent offer...When questioning SOUL members about the accuracy of the four percent, they insist that the cost of living in Chicago is rising faster than in the rest of the nation. This is also untrue: Headline CPI for the Chicago-Gary-Kenosha area grew at a 2.54-percent average annual rate, and Core CPI for the area estimated the inflation rate at just 1.95 percent.
(Emphasis is mine)

He further lambasted the present campaign for the arbitrary nature of the 4% figure, since it does not correlate to either the empirical data, or the anecdotal assertions also being used to bolster the demand. A week later, a member of the workers union wrote to argue that "Inflation data does not reflect reality." An interesting premise, to say the least, but he makes several claims that demand further exploration, due to their potentially misleading implications:

[The CPI value of 2.53] hides the fact that inflation has been trending upward over the last year—the average over the last 6 months has been 3.51 percent

One has to wonder, then, what the union found unsatisfactory about the 3.5% increase that they voted to reject?

The author also mentions rising property taxes and rent values, both of which are valid concerns - yet the CPI breakdown clearly shows that rent and housing costs are factored into both the national and the regional calculations. Most confusing is his claim that:

[T]he inflation rate for gasoline, now at 26.1 percent, affects us greatly. [This] figures are not reflected in Lees’s figure of 2.53 percent, but they are reflected in our lives.

Hmm, call me crazy, but as I undestand it that is exactly what seperates CPI from Core CPI - the CPI value of 2.53% is higher precisely because it does include the price of fuel, which tends to have a much higher inflation value and raise the entire metric. The author closes with an ad hominem exhortation to consult with the workers about how much of a cost of living pay raise they deserve - a valid request, so long as the workers are consulting with the facts.

The war (not so) at home

Last Sunday's Washington Post featured a remarkably insightful editorial written by a Soldier named William Quinn. After serving a tour in Iraq from 2005-2006, he returned to attend Georgetown as an undergraduate. "The only feeling I've ever had that was more surreal than arriving in a war zone," he begins, "was returning from one."

I find it frustrating that Facebook is a bigger part of most students' lives than the war...I may be prejudiced, but many of my college peers seem self-absorbed. I didn't want to end up like that...

I have lamented in the past about the decline of the American University, particularly Chicago, but Quinn's perspective is uniquely suited to demonstrating its shortcomings. The war in Iraq has no analogue within American History, because it's minimal impact on the civilian population is unprecedented. It is present on campus, but only as an "issue" - an opportunity for self-promoting advocacy and intellectual masturbation - often having the remarkable effect of demonstrating self-delusion rather than the intended inflation of already bloated sophomoric egos.

The fact that the average college student is unaffected by the war is as much a consequence of an increasingly relativistic and self-promoting educational system as it is a side-effect of a technologically advanced military unlike any in the world. It is almost ironic, then, that the very tools by which we are able to prevent drastic changes in the civilian way of life during war (avoiding the draft, incredibly low casualty rates, revolutionary weapon and intelligence technology), have led to a less engaged and supportive civilian populous because of their separation from the conflict.

It shouldn't surprise Quinn, therefore, that the average student is much more concerned with resumes and reactionary politics than self-sacrifice and "the culture of duty" - never before has a population been asked to do so little as part of a war effort. It is only a sad but predictable outcome, then, that they choose to do just that.