protest

I've been meaning to put this up for a while, but since the event occurred at 8 am outdoors, it kind of froze my brain for a couple of weeks. The G.E.O. (graduate union) here, which I've been involved with, has been negotiating our contract since before I was on campus. This has involved various meetings, rallies, petitions, etc. on our side which have for the most part been pretty difficult to "organize" (recruit people for.) Recently, the bargaining teams went into mediation, and before the last scheduled mediation session, they called for a rally at the mediation site.

As you can see, it looks like a giant spaceship, and is located WAY down on the south side of campus- definitely not walking distance in the 14 degree plus windchill temperatures. So we had to ship people, coffee, and donuts there.

We planned on making a "tunnel" leading to the door, which would have been pretty scary to walk down, I suppose, if you knew we were protesting you. Really, though, no one walked through the tunnel- they just went by the side of the building.

There were over 100 people there, on one day's notice, on a Friday, at 8 in the morning, outdoors, in the snow, in 14 degree weather, in January. It's the first time I've actually been proud of us. And they did end up settling the contract that day, so I suppose it all paid off.