IU on Strike lacked tact

IU on Strike made me angry. It made me frustrated. It made me sad.

I suppose these are normal emotions to feel as one watches a cause for which he or she has sympathy for crash and burn to the ground with about as much elegance as Dumbo the elephant.

I don’t for a minute question the principles, conviction or perseverance of the leaders of IU on Strike.

But I very much blame their incredible lack of organization and the debilitating inefficiency of the actions they planned and executed.

I firmly believe IU must remain a public institution.

The recent downswing in higher education funding from the state government, caused in part by eight years of the Daniels’ administration’s utter disregard for public education, has forced the University to resort to raising tuition, fees and — as the IDS recently investigated — recruiting from high-income demographics such as international students.

Clearly, the issues raised by IU on Strike have validity.

But the “strategies” the group implemented absolutely do not.

First, knowledge of the actual logistics of striking seemed to evade the group’s leadership.

The majority of strikes are carried out by large groups of unionized laborers, and the strike actions are backed by leaders in the labor union.

This is effective because all the workers strike.

That’s where the leverage for change comes from.

In the absence of a unionized group, a strike can only function if large enough numbers are recruited to participate.

Tell that to the several hundred students and faculty members that joined the strike, out of the tens of thousands of students, instructors and employees at IU Bloomington.

Anyone with any foresight whatsoever knew IU on Strike was doomed to fail.

But there were still plenty of points to be made while they had everyone’s attention, right?

The answer is absolutely yes, but IU on Strike failed to make any of them.

Every single demand issued by the group was an expensive change in policy for an already strapped-for-cash institution, and literally zero solutions were offered to offset the costs of their slightly ridiculous demands.

I strongly agree that education at a state university should remain affordable, but a group (especially one of the embarrassingly small size of the strikers) outright demanding that the University immediately slash tuition, eliminate fees and pay all its employees more while not suggesting a single way to increase revenue is entirely ludicrous.

It is not financially feasible, nor is it a reasonable request of an institution the size of IU.

Budget issues of this magnitude have no choice but to be dealt with at the level of the Statehouse.

I believe the campaign platform of Hoosiers 4 Solutions is a model that has merit, and is also a model that I consider much more responsible, as opposed to the comparatively childish behavior of IU on Strike.

I very much stand behind the effort to keep an IU education public, affordable and high-quality, but I believe IU on Strike has done more damage to that cause than good.

­— sreddiga@indiana.edu