I continue with the evening of December 2, 1988, at the non-victory party at Buffet Flats as reported in Bendnotes 4. After the brief notes on my conversation with Hal, I had a long report on my conversation with Don, a member of the Faculty Forum's bargaining committee.
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We begin by talking about the stress of doing different kinds of labor. I had snapped at a student in the hall the day before, caught myself, apologized, and then been called on the carpet by that student in our class. I shared this story with Don. . . He said that sometimes he snapped at students when they interrupted the administrative work he was doing. I said that he could close his door. He said that he was forced to do that sometimes but that he hated to, because it gave the impression that he was inaccessible. I said that if he worked for a university he would have to worry about that. (Our organizational culture at COCC, and perhaps at many community colleges, laces students first.) He talked about having to almost have two different minds -- his administrative mind which he could cut off and cut out if a student came by, and his teaching mind. This of course gave me the oportunity to talk about my experience of being constructed very differently by my different classes (I said that I was much more open in in interpersonal, much tougher in speech) but that I was lucky because I teach about the way communication constructs us. As I spoke, Don smiled, and responded sometimes by saying, "Yes, I can see how that would be very hard."
I was interpreting some of Don's responses to me as being very similar to my responses to my students. He used support strategies and responded to my presentation of myself as challenged by my job. I have heard that the math and science department here seems to be a paradisical organizational culture. I began to see, by Don's supportive communication behaviors, how that culture may be constructed.
I wanted to get some information about how the negotiations were going along. So I began to talk about the class structure at COCC. [Here I discuss my interactions with a friendly part timer who had developed one of the courses I was teaching but who bore me no ill will.]
Don talked about how they were trying to get support for the part timers, so that people who worked hard for this institution were rewarded for doing so. He said that the administration supported their position by saying that they were already paying part timers here more than any other Oregon community college. Don talked about the bargaining team's position that a first class institution should deal with all its employees equitably.
I talked about how I had felt a lot of friendliness here -- that no part timers . . . had treated me, personally, like the enemy, even though they had every right to do so. I chose this strategy to reveal to Don that I understood the ways in which economics can influence interpersonal interaction. I wanted to create a sense of identification. I also wanted to provoke a sense of protectiveness in him -- I was disclosing a weakness (the desire that people like me, and my own sense that other people might not think I'm ok) and I expected him to respond to that exposure of weakness by showing me that I was ok. I hoped that he would do so by reciprocally disclosing information about how the organization worked. This reciprocal disclosure would show me that I was ok -- trustworthy, believable, a concerned citizen.
He did.
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I'll continue this conversation in my next post.
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