That Stinketh Not

The revolution began over borscht. Bowls of it, laced with rotten meat, were served to the crew of the battleship Potemkin. This insult turned out to be the last straw. The crew mutinied, murdering their captain, and sailed for the port of Odesa. The sailors’ rebellion kicked off a round of strikes and work-stoppages across the Russian empire. A few months prior, a priest by the name of Gapon led 200,000 workers and their families toward St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace. They planned to present the tsar with a petition for the protection of workers’ rights. Blocks from their destination, they were stopped by the army, which opened fire, killing more than 100, and wounding 500 more. Among workers’ demands was the establishment of an eight-hour work day. The year was 1905.

Fast forward to 2016. Almost nobody I know works a 40-hour work week anymore. Just about everyone is either under or over-employed. It’s either zero, less than 20, or pushing 80. Many work multiple jobs without benefits. They have to. Even $15 per hour won’t support a couple, never mind a family, living in the Boston area. And if your children aspire to college, forget about it. (According to the Economic Policy Institute, you’d need to make $41 per hour to support a family of four in Sudbury, Mass.)

At the University of Massachusetts-Boston, I teach students working two, and sometime three part-time jobs while attempting to carry a full course load. Many shoulder additional stresses, supporting dependent family members, caretaking elderly or ill parents or grandparents, and even raising younger sisters and brothers. More than a few arrived in the U.S directly from war zones. One of my best students, a refugee from Sudan, learned to write English by tracing the alphabet in sand.

These are the people who will be hurt by the University’s recent decision to lay off one-third of my colleagues, nearly 400 adjunct faculty.

Every administrator working in higher education speaks about excellence. The rhetoric sounds good but rings hollow. By investing in buildings and not people, the message we send to the next generation contradicts every premise of humanist education. Increased class size all but guarantees faculty can’t give students individualized attention to help them link what they’re studying to what they’re living.

But universities shouldn’t be forced to choose between building a safe and attractive physical plant and providing students with the education they deserve. The New York Times recently ran a front page story about states’ shrinking support for public institutions of higher education.

The nationwide race toward privatizing public entities goes squarely against the University’s charter, which underscores the institution’s obligation to “maintain and increase” access for the economically disadvantaged and minorities.

There’s no rotten meat in our borscht yet, but a few of pieces are beginning to smell funny.

The first significant student protest in the United States took place at Harvard in 1766. Having been served rancid butter in the student cafeteria, Asa Dunbar, Henry David Thoreau’s grandfather, leaped onto a table and cried: “Our butter stinketh. Give us, therefore, butter that stinketh not.” The students then poured out into the Yard in protest. The Great Butter Rebellion, as it came to be known, triggered a series of actions well into the next century, over matters ranging from bad cabbage to the mistreatment of students by faculty. At times, cannonballs flew and missiles were hurled through chapel windows.

Our students are a lot more timid these days. They don’t incline toward hurling missiles even when their education indentures them to a system indifferent to their needs. But everyone has their limits. So I ask you, fellow citizens, legislators, friends: Please. Give us butter that stinketh not.

These days, Harvard’s nearly $40 billion endowment guarantees that its students can count on butter from grass-fed cows, along with their pumpkin lattes. If the state anticipates a budget shortfall, there are readily available sources—including taxing the surprisingly profitable non-profit institutions right in our neighborhood, beginning with Harvard.

Askold Melnyczuk directs the Graduate Creative Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts-Boston where he is also on the executive committee of the Faculty/Staff Union.