By Paul Rozycki

It was a cool, breezy day for an outdoor rally, but the gathered University of Michigan-Flint (UM-Flint) faculty had the wind at their backs as they welcomed a new tenure-track faculty union on April 23, 2024.

The faculty had gathered at McKinnon Plaza to announce the University of Michigan-Flint American Federation of Teachers-American Association of University Professors Local 5671, their newly formed union.

The union is made up of over 150 tenure-track faculty at UM-Flint, and many organizers, other union leaders and students came out to celebrate its formation on Tuesday. 

Assistant Professor of Political Science Kim Sachs began by announcing the formal recognition of the union and said that its local number — 5671 — was no accident. The college was founded in 1956 as Flint College, part of the University of Michigan, and the name was changed to the University of Michigan-Flint in 1971, she explained. 

“After two years of organizing, we now have the exclusive right to represent the tenure-track faculty here in Flint. Flint is unique—vibrant, consequential and inimitable. The campus is part of that.” Sachs said. “Though this moment is one of recognition, it is neither beginning nor the end, but rather part of a movement that began in 1956 and moves forward into the future with faculty, students, and staff, working side by side for a better institution.”

Daniel Birchok, Associate Professor of Anthropology in the college’s Department of Behavioral Sciences and member of the UMF-AFT AAUP Local 5671 organizing committee, said organizing for the union began with 40 or 50 people and grew over the last two years. 

He added that “the voice of labor should be heard” and that the union’s goal is to work with other parts of the university and “to bring water not fire” to the community. Birchok also said that concerns over pay, work load, state aid and organizational changes motivated many to join the union, and he urged those who have not yet joined to become a part of it.

Other speakers and guests spoke of the broader labor landscape UM-Flint’s new faculty union was joining.

University of Michigan-Flint history professor John Ellis and his dog, Walli, pose for a photo during a rally to support the university’s new tenure-track faculty union on April 23, 2024. (Photo by Paul Rozycki)

UM-Flint student Sami Kotob noted the revival of the labor movement and that the action taken by the faculty was part of a “wider national movement” that strengthens unions.

Daniel O’Connell, Lecturer Employees Organization (LEO) Flint Campus Chair, said LEO “look[s] forward to working together for a better Flint campus for students, faculty, and staff,” while congratulating the Local 5671.

O’Connell also noted “labor is stronger together” — a theme among many speakers on April 23, which also included Karen Miller, immediate past-president of the Oakland University AAUP, UM-Flint librarian Emily Newberry, and Hillary Mummers, who spoke on behalf of the University Staff United union.

Terrence Martin, president of the Michigan AFT, congratulated the new union’s organizers and said that the union will move the university, the community, and Flint forward and assure that “Flint will have a voice.” 

“UM-Flint plays an important role in our state’s education system, and the faculty are a crucial voice in ensuring that it remains strong for generations to come,” Martin said.

Looking ahead, Birchok said that there are two major goals for the faculty union in the months to come: the first is to write a constitution for the new union, and the second is to prepare for possible contract negotiations in the fall.

Yesterday I got a call from a mutual friend, telling me that Bill Hart-Davidson had passed away. I was shocked. 

Bill and I had known each other since at least 1999, when both of us received our PhDs and went on the job market. In the very early 2000s, we were put on the same SIGDOC panel along with Mark Zachry, and the three of us got to talking afterwards. (I already knew Mark well, since he had been my office mate at Iowa State). Soon the three of us began collaborating, writing a streak of conference papers from 2006-2012 and conducting research about our shared interest in how people communicate and mediate their work via texts. 

We stopped our regular collaborations after 2012, as each of us began pursuing other research interests. But we still made a point to see each other at conferences and to seek counsel for sticky problems. In fact, the last time I contacted Bill, it was to thank him for some feedback he gave on an article I was trying to write.

Since we were the same age, we did a lot of things in tandem. For instance, I remember talking to him at SIGDOC 2007 (El Paso) about the fact that I had begun ashtanga yoga to get back in shape. He had recently begun biking for health reasons. Around that time, we both picked up bass guitar -- although he stuck with it and I didn't. We both became involved in our departments' digital writing labs. And eventually we both picked up service obligations, with Bill becoming the Associate Dean of Research & Graduate Education at his university.

But we diverged in other ways. While I am introverted, Bill was always outgoing and deeply interested in people -- qualities that made him a great teacher, but also a great leader. He did a stint in Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) leadership and became an ATTW Fellow. While I was researching entrepreneurship from a safe distance, he became an entrepreneur, co-inventing Eli Review: peer review software that is now being used at colleges and universities. Bill was endlessly interested in how to push the field forward, and as a result, he seemed to know everyone -- and at least a little bit about everything -- in it.

So Bill touched a lot of people's lives -- as an outstanding professor, an associate dean, an entrepreneur, a bass player, and on and on. He was always gracious, always enthusiastic about people's projects, and always focused on amplifying what worked rather than tearing down what didn't. Our field has lost someone really vital -- but more importantly, all of us have lost a good friend. I just can't believe he's gone.

Burnt out much? A study links working late, or variable shifts with health problems later in life. Maybe it's time to quit hustle culture for good.

(Image credit: simonkr)

Reading this Jessica Grose piece — so similar to ten thousand other reports made in recent yers — on the miseries induced or exacerbated by digital technologies in the classroom, I think: Everyone knows all this.

Everyone knows that living on screens is making children miserable in a dozen different ways, contributing to ever-increasing rates of mental illness and inhibiting or disabling children’s mental faculties.

Everyone knows that engaging creatively with the material world is better for children — is better for all of us. 

Everyone knows that Meta and TikTok are predatory and parasitical, and that they impoverish the lives of the people addicted to them. 

Everyone knows that social media breed bad actors: each platform does this in its own way, but they all do it, and the more often people engage on such platforms the more messed-up and unhappy they become. 

Everyone knows that the big Silicon Valley companies do not care how much damage they do to society or the environment; they care only about what Mark Zuckerberg likes to call DOMINATION. The occupational psychosis of Silicon Valley is sociopathy. The rise of LLMs is simply the next big step in this sociopathic program. 

Everyone knows all this. Some people, for their own reasons, choose to deny it, but even they know it — indeed, probably no one knows all that I’ve been saying better than Mark Zuckerberg and Shou Zi Chew and Sam Altman do. 

So our problem is not a lack of knowledge; it’s a deficiency of will and a malformation of desire. St. Augustine explained it all to us 1600 years ago: My actions are determined by my will, and my will is driven by what I love. We do badly by our children because we do not love them sufficiently or properly; we do badly by our neighbors for the same reason; we do badly by ourselves for the same reason, because narcissists — and one of the things everyone knows is that all the forces named above breed narcissists — do not rightly love themselves. 

Those of us who care about the future of our children, our neighbors, and ourselves don’t need to repeat what everyone already knows. We need to devote our full attention to one question and one question only: How do we love rightly and teach others to love rightly? If that’s not our constant meditation, we’re wasting our time. If we cannot redirect our desires towards better things than Silicon Valley, AKA Vanity Fair, sells, then nothing, literally nothing, will get better.