The university may indeed make strong practical arguments against Michelle Hartman’s decision to hold classes off campus in order to avoid crossing the picket line, but those practical concerns only thinly veil the underlying normative issue—did Hartman sacrifice the educational merit of her class and her academic duties in order to fulfil a personal moral obligation?
Whether Hartman’s actions are interpreted as those of an idealist supporting the people who make her job possible, or those of a McGill employee aware that the deteriorating compensation in the benefits package for any fellow employees could set a dangerous precedent for her own salary, it remains that she undertook the least disruptive action that would significantly help the strikers’ cause, a cause she clearly believes in.
Other faculty members are walking alongside strikers, writing letters to the university and local media, and speaking to their students directly about the issue, but how much effect do any of these actions have? None or next to none, and the one complaint no one can level against Hartman is that her decision didn’t, at the very least, draw plenty of attention to the cause she supports.
Strikes, by nature, are disruptive, and it’s no accident that this one coincided with the busiest administrative time of the year. But when it comes to strike supporting actions, there’s a sliding scale between being ineffective and overly disruptive, and holding classes off campus lands in a balance between those two poles. Hartman’s only mistake was holding her class so far off campus that it created unmanageable conflicts in students’ schedules. It’s indisputable that making it impossible for a student to get to another class detracts from their education; however, if Hartman had moved her classes to Lola Rosa, for example, the complaints of inconvience would have been baseless. Education can take place anywhere, and holding the seminar off campus may have stimulated class debate. The argument that students couldn’t be provided with “safe and suitable conditions for learning” outside of campus is tenuous at best, and based on the notion that teaching can only happen on McGill’s grounds. Educators should move away from that kind of institutionalized, archaic fine print. By being forced to debate, confront, and take action on an ongoing labour dispute in an academic setting, the students in the seminar had an opportunity for real-life learning.
The very fact that faculty members are taking action to support MUNACA and that students are aware of the inconveniences imposed by the strike are powerful tools when a labour dispute relies on the currency of public image. These editors of the McGill Tribune believe that Hartman was within her rights as an educator to hold her class off campus, and in so doing, fulfilled all academic obligations to her students.
