Dear Bargaining Unit Members,
I am incredibly honored and humbled to be given the opportunity to serve as your President. I promise you I don’t take this lightly and will work my ass off to do what I can do. Besides, I still suffer from the “gotta work twice as hard and expect half as much” motto that I’ve known from too early.
We’ve got a bargaining year, re-opening, and the business-as-usual challenges of equitable pay and attacks on academic freedom. Working conditions, especially for those tasked with caring for others, are not as accommodating as they need to be. And of course, in our hyper-productive society, we have yet to truly push the bounds of how best we can advocate for ourselves, our own health and well-being, as we seek to stake out a career foothold in our university. Furthermore, despite grand gestures and kind intentions, structural and historical conditions haunt our moment; those of us from communities dismissed, neglected, and ostracized in Higher Ed are still fighting for our rightful place in discourses often about us, but rarely led by us.
As for me, I’m an Instructor. My academic and political work has always centered on students. Students, like myself, who had their life and the lives of those I help care for, radically changed because of my time in higher ed. I want to make sure those opportunities are always there for our students. That can’t happen if we faculty are not supported in the ways we need to be, if we continually have roadblocks and hurdles thrown at us as we work. That can’t happen if we faculty are not actively involved in shared governance. And that’s why I joined up and got involved; that’s why I stepped forward for this new opportunity. UAUO is one of the few avenues left on campus where we got a shot at doing things differently. So let’s get it done.
Avinnash
Avinnash P. Tiwari
Instructor, ENG & President, UAUO
Reflections from UA’s new president
