Students offer little sympathy as faculty mull strike

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- As members of Southern Illinois University's faculty union consider taking their yearlong contract dispute with administrators to the picket line, students on Monday offered little sympathy for either side.

"If the professors don't like their job, they should go get another one," said Joshua Ratts, a 26-year-old psychology senior from Champaign.

The 400-member union that represents the 688 tenured and tenure-track professors on the Carbondale campus are threatening to walk off their jobs as early as Wednesday after a year of contentious contract negotiations with school officials.

Faculty at the university's Edwardsville campus and at its medical and law schools are not represented by the union and would be unaffected by a strike.

Administrators made what they called their last and best offer Thursday.

Although Carbondale professors are generally pleased with the school's proposed 7.5 percent raise over four years, the professors care more about their non-economic demands that are going unmet, union president Morteza Daneshdoost said Monday.

The union wants faculty to have more say into hiring and tenure decisions on the Carbondale campus, Daneshdoost said.

Walter Wendler, who joined the campus as chancellor in July 2001, says the faculty already has considerable input into such decisions and has called the latest contract offer "the best at any public university in the state of Illinois."

Union leaders planned to poll members on their support for the school's latest offer. They will not release the results from either poll, said union spokesman James Kelly.

Decision expected

The union's governing body will decide this evening whether to reject the school's proposal, in which case Daneshdoost said he could call a strike as early as Wednesday.

Union leaders may also send the question of whether to strike back to the members to determine by a vote, he said.

As the bickering continues over a contract, the 22,000 students on the Carbondale campus are concerned about whether a strike would delay graduation for some seniors or otherwise wreak havoc with their plans.

"A lot of students just want them to get in and teach," said Michael Jarard, a 21-year-old senior and president of the undergraduate student body.

The 40-member undergraduate Senate is backing the union, he said, although the group has taken no position on a possible strike.

Wendler has said no senior will be prevented from graduating because of classes that are canceled due to a strike. Administrators, retired professors, graduate students and temporary hires who hold advanced degrees in the necessary fields would replace strikers, he said.

Joana Munemura, 21, who arrived last month from her native Japan to study nutrition, doesn't understand why her professors didn't resolve their contract problems over the summer break.

"International students pay a lot of money to learn here," she said.

Chad Sussen, a 26-year-old accounting senior from Champaign, said he has little sympathy for the union and is unconcerned about a strike.

"If Albert Einstein was one of my professors, and I thought he was going to teach me something no one else could, I'd be upset," Sussen said.

"But anyone can teach from a textbook, which is what these guys do," he said.