The New Yorker

The Talk of the Town

Spring Fever Dept.

SUBSTITUTE

by Austin Kelley

Issue of 2004/5/03

Posted 2004/4/26

Even under normal circumstances, with the magnolias and the cherry trees in full bloom, it would have been tough last week for Columbia students to drag themselves to class, but, as luck would have it, hundreds of them were additionally hampered by a little bit of a labor situation—a graduate teaching assistants’ strike that left them without instructors. Still, whether from curiosity or duty, a small number of them managed to amble into Kate Isard’s Masterpieces of Western Art class, last Wednesday, knowing that they would not find Isard there. Instead, they found Robert Harrist, a professor of Chinese art and the director of the Art Humanities program, who began explaining the procedure for finishing the semester without a teacher.

Harrist, a short, trim man in his fifties with round glasses and a round face, was standing in front of a giant screen. As he spoke, Rousseau’s painting “The Forest in Winter at Sunset” was projected onto his navy blazer. He squinted. Grades, he assured the students, would still be given out, and there would be a final exam. As latecomers filed in, Harrist began taking questions, walking genially among the desks.

Some students, it became clear, seemed to resent the fact that another teacher, Lynn Catterson, had been brought in to take over. Catterson, a resolute-looking summer-session instructor in her late forties, sat silently in the corner behind a small desk. “If I chose to skip the final exam, would I fail the class?” a young man in back asked.

“Well, that’s something I wanted to be very clear about with the dean, and things are still up in the air,” Harrist said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen, but, yes, your grade will be affected by your performance on the exam.”

“I feel I’m being put in a difficult position,” another student, with slick hair and a pressed blue oxford, said. He was stretched out on the windowsill. “You’re forcing me to side with the administration when I want to support my teacher.” Students shuffled in their seats.

The strike is the culmination of a long struggle between the graduate students and the university over the right to unionize. The university is taking the hard line against the union but has recently introduced a gentler strikebreaking rhetoric. A letter that Henry Pinkham, the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, sent to grad students last week advanced some novel formulations: “Actions that undermine respect for difference of opinion are antithetical to the values of the University. . . . I hope we will all do our utmost to minimize the divisiveness often associated with strikes.”

Harrist was doing his utmost. “There are no easy answers here,” he said. “Well, if there’s one thing we can agree on in this case, it’s that reasonable people can disagree on what’s reasonable.”

“Let me just tell you what my reasonable argument is.” A bearded undergraduate named Jacob McKean had stepped in front of the projector. “I think it’s an outrage that you sent in these cut-rate scabs to teach our class. I think it’s ridiculous that you’ve asked us to undermine our principles.” Catterson, the scab in question, did not move or speak. Harrist calmly replied that these were very experienced teachers who had often taught the class.

“I’m glad that over the course of their experience they haven’t developed any integrity,” McKean said. A “union yes” sticker and a union pin studded the front of his T-shirt. “This is bullshit. I’m leaving.” He marched out. The students looked at one another nervously.

Harrist continued to pace around the room, answering questions about workload. Rousseau’s forest was reflected in his glasses. There would be no extra work, he said. A few more students wandered out. Someone asked, “Will we be penalized if we choose not to attend class?” The answer, to put it concisely, was no, and soon the room was nearly empty.

As the queries returned to the subject of grades, Harrist began to look flustered. “Believe it or not,” he said, “I’ve got a group of graduate students upstairs right now waiting to give their final reports.” With that, he hurried out, and Catterson took command. After a while, she lowered the lights and began to click through the slides. She lectured on the spectator and the female nude. Stopping on a Goya, she said, “This is a prelude to Playboy, basically.”