The graduate teaching assistants will soon be voting on unionization and naturally there are the pros and cons for unionization.

Lately, we have been disturbed by the rumor that the university is attempting to convince graduate students that the union is bad through meetings at the diverse departments. We think this is a ludicrous idea.

We participated in the meeting at the chemistry department and came away with the impression that the administration was actually pro-union. And let’s face the facts: The information on the Web site was approved by the Graduate Employees Union and there was a representative of the GEU present at the departmental meetings. This allowed the GEU to address any factual misrepresentation by the administration. So where is the problem?

If the GEU thinks the university is promoting an anti-union movement, why doesn’t the GEU make an open forum for all graduate assistants to ask questions? The idea has been suggested, and we hope it will be accepted. But in any case, the GEU must answer questions publicly. By not doing so it appears to be either afraid or knows it cannot provide satisfactory arguments.

These are the questions we feel the GEU needs to address: