Jeff Millman: Putting 'evil' in perspective

A lot of administrators, professors and graduate students have wondered why undergraduates seemed so disinterested in the union debate. After all, unionization may have a large effect on undergraduate teaching and tuition. Perhaps it's because each side defines the other as evil. Since undergraduates don't have much experience with evil, it's hard for us to sort through all this evil. Some graduate students claim that the administration has engineered an evil "Think About It" campaign, falsely implying that unions would constrain academic freedom and lower average stipends. The unionists believe otherwise, claiming that only a union can protect students from the administration's evil. On the other hand, the anti-union crowd was represented in a column on Wednesday entitled "The Evil of Unions." Richard Gelles, the writer and dean of the School of Social Work, wrote that given his experience with unions, he can predict that "the core of what makes us a great school and university will be damaged and, in the long run, corrupted" if graduate students unionize. Now, it would be easier for us to understand this evil if we had some point of reference -- say, the "axis of evil." Therefore, let's see how the Penn administration's evil compares to the evil of Saddam University in Baghdad. According to its Web site, Saddam University was founded in 1993 and aims for the "creation and invention which is adopted and comprehended from the superior mind of the president Saddam Hussein." The university encompasses the Saddam College of Law, Saddam College of Medicine, Saddam College of Engineering, Saddam College of Science and Saddam College of Political Science. One perk for students at Saddam University is that they are "often promoted with the president's kindness in contracting with various ministries and governmental circles." Conversely, some Penn grad students will tell you that the tenure process and Penn's sketchy classification and promotion of visiting faculty demonstrate anything but Judith Rodin's kindness. And some Penn grad students would probably envy the Saddam University student salaries and "merits which are given regardless of the contracting" with the government. It's probably much easier to live off the Saddam "stipends" given the modest cost of living that Iraq enjoys. In comparison, Penn grad students must bear Philadelphia prices and inflated healthcare premiums. Plus, you've got to imagine that the hefty monetary reward of the "Saddam Prize Competition" is much more than the Penn Prize for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching, which Rodin finances out of her own salary. One claim from the Penn unionist is that graduate students simply have little recourse to defend the fruits of their intellectual property. But at Saddam University, their scholars have the freedom of isolation and are protected from those that want to steal their ideas, especially those United Nations weapons inspectors who have asked to interview these scientists about possible Iraqi weapons technology and locations. Now, it wouldn't be completely fair to characterize Penn's treatment of graduate students as worse than that at Saddam University, especially when the Penn unionists have some "axis of evil" in them, too. Deputy Provost Peter Conn -- who yesterday described the union as "mischievous... undefined, divisive and arbitrary" -- could make an equally convincing argument that these students are just as disappointing as those at Kim Il Sung University, which, according to its Web site, has "become the supreme seat of juche science [Stalinism] and a model of universities" throughout North Korea. When current dictator and "comrade" Kim Jong-Il visited in 1996, he complained that students were lacking in "combative spirit," whereas the Mobile Propaganda Unit of the People's Army showed "stamina and vitality." As transcribed in the April 1997 edition of the Monthly Chosin, Kim complained "there is a clear difference in the attitude of the armed soldiers at the front and the students studying in the rear." Similarly, Penn unionists have been labeled for their lack of academic spirit: Gelles said unions replace the students' "vibrancy of merit... with the stultifying culture of mediocrity." Kim believes the students' poor socialist spirit results from inadequate "political education." Conn couldn't agree more: unionists are overzealous believers in collectivization. Or they are embracing the unfortunate corporatization of education, kind of like how these North Korean students refuse to donate their rice to the People's Army. Kim said, "If the U.S. imperialists know that we do not have rice for the military, then they would immediately invade us." So in real world terms we can all understand, the Penn administrators are the Iraqi socialists, evil in their restrictions, and the Penn grad students are the North Korean socialists, evil for their divisive attitude. And like the real world where its wealth and omnipotence makes the United States liable for this evil, the Penn undergraduates, as the providers of the most tuition, must bear the fallout from this debate. Now the undergraduates in the ivory tower are sheltered no longer. Jeff Millman is a senior Philosophy, Politics, and Economics major from Los Angeles, Calif.

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