For the past several weeks, Illinois State University has generously provided Illinois with a nightly, publicly funded reality television program we could call “Union Strike Theater”. Every evening and morning for several weeks, we have turned on our local news with the same optimism usually reserved for Seinfeld and Friends reruns, only to hear the familiar refrain that still no progress has been made in contract negotiations.
The segment always opens the same way. The camera pans lovingly across a cluster of young millennial union employees and their limousine-liberal student supporters, all carefully arranging themselves for maximum camera exposure. They smile, joke, wave at friends and family watching from home, and chant catchy, focus-group-tested slogans like "Uni Wages Are Puny!" The overall mood is less “labor dispute” and more “pep rally with clipboards”.
Then comes the inevitable cutaway to the University spokesperson. Every time, without fail, it’s a grey-haired, double-chinned, Reagan-era Baby Boomer throwback in a three-piece suit, speaking in the soothing dialect of Upper Administration. He gravely repeats sophisticated phrases like "bad faith negotiations" and "lacking any logic or reason," as though uttering them often enough might summon some kind of prophetic meaning where none really exists.
At this point, we can’t help but wonder if either side realizes they are perfectly reenacting every stereotype of disastrous union–management relations ever recorded. It’s as if both camps studied the same outdated playbook and agreed to follow it word-for-word.
What truly makes these performances worthy of a case-study is the setting. All of this is taking place at the gates of a publicly funded institution of higher learning. This is supposed to be a place where nuance lives, where evidence matters, where complex problems inspire thoughtful solutions, and where critical thinkers from diverse worlds come together to solve problems. Instead, we get slogans on one side and buzzwords on the other, neither apparently embarrassed by how predictable and unproductive it all looks as they play out their roles.
Meanwhile, students attend classes taught by uncertainty, taxpayers foot the bill for the standoff, and the broader mission of education sits quietly offstage, wondering how it became collateral damage in a dispute that seems designed more for optics than resolution.
If this is the current price of a good education, it’s not just tuition that’s gone up; it’s the ironically exhausting cost of watching so-called educated and responsible adults argue like caricatures in front of a graduating class of our world’s future leaders.
The segment always opens the same way. The camera pans lovingly across a cluster of young millennial union employees and their limousine-liberal student supporters, all carefully arranging themselves for maximum camera exposure. They smile, joke, wave at friends and family watching from home, and chant catchy, focus-group-tested slogans like "Uni Wages Are Puny!" The overall mood is less “labor dispute” and more “pep rally with clipboards”.
Then comes the inevitable cutaway to the University spokesperson. Every time, without fail, it’s a grey-haired, double-chinned, Reagan-era Baby Boomer throwback in a three-piece suit, speaking in the soothing dialect of Upper Administration. He gravely repeats sophisticated phrases like "bad faith negotiations" and "lacking any logic or reason," as though uttering them often enough might summon some kind of prophetic meaning where none really exists.
At this point, we can’t help but wonder if either side realizes they are perfectly reenacting every stereotype of disastrous union–management relations ever recorded. It’s as if both camps studied the same outdated playbook and agreed to follow it word-for-word.
What truly makes these performances worthy of a case-study is the setting. All of this is taking place at the gates of a publicly funded institution of higher learning. This is supposed to be a place where nuance lives, where evidence matters, where complex problems inspire thoughtful solutions, and where critical thinkers from diverse worlds come together to solve problems. Instead, we get slogans on one side and buzzwords on the other, neither apparently embarrassed by how predictable and unproductive it all looks as they play out their roles.
Meanwhile, students attend classes taught by uncertainty, taxpayers foot the bill for the standoff, and the broader mission of education sits quietly offstage, wondering how it became collateral damage in a dispute that seems designed more for optics than resolution.
If this is the current price of a good education, it’s not just tuition that’s gone up; it’s the ironically exhausting cost of watching so-called educated and responsible adults argue like caricatures in front of a graduating class of our world’s future leaders.