Open letter to the Ithaca College Community

We, the undersigned continuing full-time faculty in the Department of Sociology, are writing in support of our part-time and contingent co-workers in their present union negotiations with our college. We view these negotiations as necessary steps toward improved wages and a more welcoming working climate. Above all else we see this as an issue of equity. It is in everyone’s interest that the wide disparity between their wages and ours change.

Our college maintains that it is “committed first and foremost to our students’ education.” Let us then continue to model more moral equitable arrangements for all of those who educate our students. We support and hope for an un-disruptive outcome. That said, should our contingent co-workers legally strike we will support their decision and not “replace” them as we must practice what we teach.

Respectfully,

Joslyn Brenton, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Sergio Cabrera, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Katherine Cohen-Filipic, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Jessica Dunning-Lozano, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Julian Euell, Associate Professor, Sociology
Belisa Gonzalez, Associate Professor, Sociology
Jonathan Laskowitz, Associate Professor, Sociology
Phuong Nguyen, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Rebecca Plante, Associate Professor, Sociology
Jim Rothenberg, Associate Professor, Sociology
Stephen Sweet, Full Professor, Sociology