I can ignore this union debate. I can ignore the current political news. But I cannot and will not ignore them at the same time. As a complacent Canadian, I was taught and have come to believe that American society is immutably stubborn and not worth thinking about seeing how it still insists on using the imperial measurement system, and on watching "Entertainment Tonight." Yet I cannot help but observe some trends common to both the recent national political developments and Yale's labor woes which are quite perturbing and even ominous.
Most prominent is the us-them dichotomy. As a rhetorical weapon, oversimplification has the seductive smoothness of the serpent, and the delightful desirability of the fruit. Oversimplification requires reducing complex arguments into easily-digestible, but fallacious points. Read what Pat Buchanan and other political leaders, including Bill Clinton, have said and the use of oversimplification to attack opponents and to carve a chasm in the American people is reprehensible. The upshot of this us-them dichotomy is an electorate trapped inside the chasm, asking politicians of the left and the right for a rope. Instead of throwing down the rope politicians shout insults at each other and across the chasm. In November 1996, the electorate will have to decide between the lesser of two evils. And this would be just another example of the debasement of American politics if it was not happening here at Yale as well.
Right from the outset, the unions' leadership and the Administration have been blaming each other for being unable to reach an agreement. Both sides have oversimplified the issues central and core to their opponents.Students are invited, and sometimes, commanded to take sides. When they do they spew out as rhetoric the same oversimplified logic which was so tempting to swallow in the first place. Students who are anti-union are claiming that the unions are greedy, asking for too much from already too generous Mother Yale; taking advantage of and sabotaging her. Students who are sympathetic to the unions are claiming that administrators are too callous to meet the needs of their workers and using unfair negotiating practices. Once again, it's the oversimplified us-them dichotomy: we are right and they are wrong.
It may be that the chasm has widened so much that both the students and the electorate have fallen into complete apathy, surrounded by seemingly dominating darkness. There is light though. First, there must be an inclusive vision.
True national leaders will break down the us-them dichotomy by giving everyone a vision, a rope to help those in the chasm to climb out which then makes a bridge that connects both sides. Leaders with wisdom will point out that Yale and union workers have common ground and common purposes, that the leaderships of both sides are to blame for this stalemate. But first, we must ask what is that rope? I don't know. But then perhaps the rope is simply the recognition that there needs to be one in the first place.
Copyright 1996, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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