7 CommentsDue to the interruption of Core classes by the SWC-UAW strike, Literature Humanities sections will now require additional instruction and coursework, to be completed by January 31, 2022.
The Center for the Core Curriculum sent out an email today, December 15, regarding grading for Literature Humanities sections and following up on Dean Valentini and Dean Rosen-Mesch’s previous notice about grading for Core courses that were impacted by the SWC strike. Grades for these courses will be given a “CP” (Credit Pending) designation, which will be converted into a final grade after additional instruction and coursework is completed and graded. The full text of the email is available below.
According to the email, students in Literature Humanities courses will now have to complete an additional assignment, which they will receive detailed communications about through a special Courseworks portal. This assignment will involve engaging with texts from the latter portion of the syllabus and is due on January 31, 2022. Asynchronous reading material and analyses, as well as synchronous group office hours and discussion, will also be available when classes resume mid-January.
An invitation to join this portal and additional updates will be sent out via email. Please direct any questions to the Center for the Core Curriculum.
Email from the Center for the Core Curriculum sent to students on Wednesday, December 15 at 2:50 pm:
Dear Students,
This is the first of several messages that you will receive with details about completing Literature Humanities for the fall 2021 semester.
As Dean Valentini and Dean Rosen-Metsch wrote last week, students in Core courses that have not been meeting because of the strike will be temporarily given a transcript notation of “CP” (Credit Pending), which indicates that satisfactory progress is being made, but coursework needs to continue beyond the end of the term. This notation, which will appear in SSOL, will be converted to a final grade once you have received additional instruction and assessment, and you will receive full credit for the course. The following provides further information about how this additional instruction and assessment will take place.
Later this week, you will be given access to a special CourseWorks site. We will use this platform to communicate with you and to share at a later date detailed instructions for one additional assignment that asks you to engage with themes and texts from the fall semester and gives you the opportunity to apply what you have learned to one or more works from the latter part of the syllabus. This assignment will be due on January 31, 2022.
In early January, asynchronous instructional materials focused on texts from the latter part of the semester will be added to the CourseWorks site to aid in your learning and to guide you in the completion of your final assignment. Opportunities for synchronous online discussion and group office hours will also be offered when classes resume in mid-January.
We know you’ll have questions about the details of the assignment and grading, and we’ll be providing these details in future communications. For now, please look out for an invitation in your email to join the CourseWorks site, and contact us with any questions: core-curriculum@columbia.edu.
Thank you.
All the best,
The Center for the Core Curriculum
Avery via Bwarchives
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7 Comments
@Anonymous The undergrads and parents need to start putting pressure on the grad students. They are unyielding. They are holding everyone hostage.
@Anonymous This is ridiculous. Work with the graduate students/Union to end the strike. Don’t punish other students for a situation you created.
@Anonymous Uh, the grad students created this. They should be working through the negotiations, but they refuse. The mediators should have made them stop the strike as a condition to negotiate. Time to put pressure on the grad students to get back to work and back to negotiation table.
@Anonymous A few things regarding mediation and the strike, just to correct the record.
The Bargaining Committee of SWC (formerly GWC) in an undemocratic decision “paused” last Spring’s strike after three weeks to go into mediation. The administration had promised they were able to move on each one of the 5 main open articles and willing to reach a compromise if only student workers stopped the strike and went into mediation. To nobody’s surprise, as soon as the pressure of the strike was gone, Columbia took back its word and made ZERO concessions. The horrible Tentative Agreement that resulted was turned down by a majority of the unit. This was the first time in history that a TA was rejected by a student union – think just how bad Columbia’s proposals were.
This semester, Columbia used the same bad faith bargaining techniques they relied on for the past two years. First they didn’t want to meet SWC team in the summer and kept postponing, then they didn’t want to present new proposals until SWC had come with a full package, once SWC did that, they stalled negotiations for weeks. Only when the strike deadline was announced, they started bringing some counterproposals to the table. Then they stopped again, promised and swore they were willing to move on everything, and that they had proposals ready to discuss, but would do so only in the context of mediation. They didn’t ask to pause the strike, and SWC new Bargaining Committee wouldn’t have accepted that, given the precedent (fool me once…). Guess what? As soon as we started mediation, they took back their word and presented literally NOTHING for the first two weeks of mediation. It is only in the last few days that they made some minimal movements (while also making regressive moves, like extending their contract proposal from 3 to 5 years, which student workers won’t accept).
Your anger is misderected and based on factually wrong information. The reality is that the administration couldn’t care less about how the student body is affected by the strike. If they did, they could have brought proposals to the table earlier in the semester, instead of stalling, and this whole situation would have been resolved months ago. They just want to starve out student workers and get the cheapest agreement possible.
@Anonymous From the NLRB web page on the right to strike, here’s some information on “strikes unlawful because of the misconduct of strikers”:
“Strikers who engage in serious misconduct in the course of a strike may be refused reinstatement to their former jobs. This applies to both economic strikers and unfair labor practice strikers. [ . . . ] The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a “sitdown” strike, when employees simply stay in the plant and refuse to work, thus depriving the owner of property, is not protected by the law. Examples of serious misconduct that could cause the employees involved to lose their right to reinstatement are:
“Strikers physically blocking persons from entering or leaving a struck plant.”
When union members don’t abide by the rules for strikers, they undermine their own case and lose the sympathy of the community. That’s definitely happening here.
@Anonymous Thanks graduate workers for ruining our breaks because of your greed.
@Anonymous Is that you, Mary Boyce?