I’ll be back at my alma mater next Tuesday. This time I’ll join faculty on the picket line.

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It has been a few years since I have been at UIC. Twenty years since I was a doc student.

I’m ABD, in case you wanted to know.

Back in the day when I was a student there I was driving a taxi to pay the bills. Plus I could park it for a class and then get over to Humboldt Park to pick up the kid from the baby sitter.

The thing is, I wasn’t the only one. UIC is an urban school. Few students live on campus. There was always talk about it having an “urban mission.” But if there was an urban mission, it was a mission that was driven less by the administration and more by the students who went there.

And by the professors that I had. Like Leon Bellin in what was then called the College of Art, Architecture and Urban Planning.

Or Bill Schubert, Bill Ayers and Terri Thorkeldsen in the College of Education.

Professor Schubert was my graduate advisor. But also a friend. And so I would refer to him as Bill in class.

Until I was taken to task by an older Black lady – a teacher in a Chicago public school – who pulled me aside in the hallway during break and sternly said to me, “Young man. You call that man Professor Schubert. You show him some respect.”

Which I did from then on. I had heard about the hidden curriculum from Professor Schubert. I saw it in action from that Chicago public school teacher.

Last year the faculty formed a union and began bargaining with administration. The university has a bundle of money that they have targeted to spend on further expansion into the surrounding neighborhoods. But many non-tenured faculty who teach first year undergrads are making less than $30,000 a year. And that is with a PhD.

There are other issues, of course. Even after more than 50 bargaining seasons, administration remains unmoved on the issue of salary and working conditions according to the faculty negotiators.

On Tuesday, I’ll be back at UIC. I’ll be joining faculty on their picket line. They are holding a two day strike, hoping it will get some attention from administration.

And then in the afternoon, I’ll be heading up to Evanston for our Soup Kitchen and half a cola protest at State Representative Robyn Gabel’s office – 620 Davis Street – from 4 to 5 PM.

A good article about the UIC situation can be found here.