Marking & Assessment Boycott

[aridapricot]

So how do you think this will pan out this time? Are you taking part? How do you think things will go in your university/department?
My uni is docking 30% pay. Also in my department (where the spirit tends to be "yes we'll do whatever UCU asks us to do but we'll also go out of our way to cause any inconvenience to students") people are already talking about mitigations... 🙄I am not a UCU member and won't be taking part but I also fear that at some point I will be asked to cover colleague's marking or (even worse) redistribute it (given that I'm HoD).

When will we know the outcome of the ballot for industrial action? It closes at 5pm tomorrow .

Unsure. But word on the ground from our union people is that there hasn't been a great turnout. This to be expected given the inept way this whole dispute has been handled.

Curious as to whether anyone else received the other email I got from her yesterday. Seems she's already spotted an opportunity for her next battle.

Curious as to whether anyone else received the other email I got from her yesterday. Seems she's already spotted an opportunity for her next battle.

I'm no longer a member, so this has escaped me. What's her latest plan for self-promotion?

Presumably the UKRI academic freedom stoush?

The very same.

Hypocrisy in action. She wasn’t concerned about Kathleen Stock’s academic freedom.

Yep. Grady never criticised Sussex UCU whose reaction to the campaign against Stock was to call for an institutional investigation of transphobia.

A GS is voted in partly on a manifesto of helping and standing for women and minority groups. Once in post, she promptly throws a lesbian professor straight under the bus.

The Palestinian issue is attracting more vocal commentary lately too. A real issue (that the union doesn't seem to be considering) is that there's a groundswell of antisemitic sentiment - has been for a couple of decades now but it's intensified in the context of recent events - and that UK Jews who have nothing whatsoever to do with Israel or Netanyahu, and who might not even have set foot in the middle east in their lives - are now bearing the brunt of this.

I wonder what on earth my Jewish colleagues, on the left or otherwise, are thinking on seeing such communications as these bandied around on our university's internal email network. Our job is to educate. We should do it. And whatever my personal feelings on Palestine - as far as I or any other Westerner would claim to understand these, which we really can't - I will not be party to that.

According to their wording I'm now on 'the wrong side of history'. The minute that trite, patronising, sanctimonious phrase is uttered, I instantly lose patience.

UCU is a shitshow and has a large part to play in this ignorant, now all-but meaningless left/right tribalism. I don't want to be party to that, either.

I've been considering this for a long time, but I now think the time has come to leave.

Welcome to the dark side, SerafinasGoose 🤗

Grady's response to the Kathleen Stock issue has always been that Stock wasn't in UCU when it all happened so basically it was nothing to do with the Union or Grady. Bunch of knobs.

I think a more recent example of blatant hypocrisy around freedom of speech is the Edinburgh debacle over Sullivan and Todd's book where the UCU branch were the ones actually organising the protest against the book. Where was the concern for free speech then, eh?

Grady's response to the Kathleen Stock issue has always been that Stock wasn't in UCU when it all happened so basically it was nothing to do with the Union or Grady. Bunch of knobs.

Grady demanded that the University of York sack a precariously-employed member of staff for wrong-think (i.e. being a lesbian who doesn't believe that lesbians can have a penis) and also whipped up her Twitter cheerleaders to put pressure on the institution.

Yes, I remember that. Absolutely awful.

I wasn't meaning to imply that Grady wasn't involved or was innocent in the Kathleen Stock situation. At all.
What I meant was that she's very much distanced herself from the high-profile KS situation (because KS wasn't in UCU) while being personally involved and instrumental in the hounding and bullying of other sex-realist academics whose situations have been less high-profile.

I wasn't meaning to imply that Grady wasn't involved or was innocent in the Kathleen Stock situation. At all.

No, I didn't think you were, not at all! I just think it's important that we remind ourselves of Grady's own actions in relation to academic freedom, as she seems to be trying to rewrite her own history.

@GCAcademic Agree completely.

Please can someone suggest an alternative Union an academic can join aside from ucu?

Affinity

I think I know who you mean. What I didn't know was that Grady and her minions had any hand in that. Disgraceful.

I find my vice-chancellor's (and most university senior management) social media persona fantastically boring and corporate, however I think that it's exactly how it should be. A VC has to stand by certain values and sometimes make statements one way or another, but always with the aim of representing their organization without antagonizing anyone. I think the account of a Union leader should be the same with respect to its members. But I don't think this is an option for Grady, who to a great extent became GS on the basis of her social media persona.

" I find my vice-chancellor's (and most university senior management) social media persona fantastically boring and corporate, however I think that it's exactly how it should be. A VC has to stand by certain values and sometimes make statements one way or another, but always with the aim of representing their organization without antagonizing anyone."

Exactly.

And this is why Research England should have made sure that people appointed to a senior advisory committee knew that they should not be making strongly partisan statements on their social media accounts. These people are effectively civil servants in these advisory roles, and should not be expressing strong personal views publicly.

I think there's a real divide here and I don't think it's necessarily generational? (as in, I am an older millenial, yet some of the worst "social media emoters" that I know are older than Iam, whereas most of my PhD students seem horrified at this kind of behaviour). It's like some people think that being "exhausted", "sick", "broken" justify all kinds of public outbursts.

Well, the 50% threshold for further industrial action was far from being met, and even those who voted were far from unanimous. Some desperate spinning going on from Grady - the whole thing is an utter shambles.

Yes, under 43% is low, and actually 31% of those responding voting against the strike... UCU is in a shambles. I am relieved, as I have had enough of action, but I would be interested to see what happens next... Jo Grady being pushed out and a UCU Left takeover?

Here’s the UCU press release: https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/13271/Anti-union-laws-stop-university-staff-striking-for-fair-pay--conditions

Desperate stuff, comparing local elections to a strike ballot but ok …

But if the law on ballots were to change, wouldn’t more academics just leave UCU or not observe strike action? I do think it’s a bit absurd for a strike to be called if less than half of union members voted for it.

Woeful mismanagement of this entire dispute has now enabled the employer to win.

Grady has made inroads with the pension dispute; arguably the only thing she really cared about in the first place. Some of those not in the USS, who have made the most significant sacrifices and lost thousands in strike deductions in both the aggregated and disaggregated mandates, have gained the least.

I feel thoroughly let down and completely failed by the whole mess.

And that's without the fact that half her members (the female half) have already been thrown under the bus.

A resounding failure: worse than Sally Hunt.

I wouldn’t consider rejoining till she is out.