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Ah, May 31st, the year 2000, I'm in San Francisco. And I'm with Peter Radcliffe, and This will be an oral history focused to a great degree. On San Francisco State University and its union movement. Um, Peter, can we do a little, a little background where we

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were born, when we were born, where, where we grew up, just a, just a little bit. My name is Peter Radcliffe, and on my resume that came first and what came after that was born April 29th, 1932 in Istanbul, Turkey, and I always thought that helped

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me get jobs because I had an academic sounding name, Radcliffe, and then the next line, an exotic birthplace, Istanbul, Turkey. I'm not only a professor, I'm a son of a professor. Uh, my father, uh, was a professor at Robert College, but he left that position after

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a year. Uh, he had a degree in, uh, an MA in English literature from Columbia University and he'd also attended Princeton Seminary, and he was basically a, uh, uh, a preacher and he's teaching English and religion courses. Uh, when all instruction in Turkey was required to

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be secular and it was impossible to teach religion courses, he returned to the ministry. And so from the age of 1 through the 5th, uh, mid, mid-fifth grade, I grew up in Spokane, Washington, and my parents moved to, uh, San Diego. My father had a church

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there and uh Uh, I graduated from high school in San Diego in 1950, went to Oberlin College 1950 to 1954, University of Washington, graduate work in philosophy, uh 1954 to uh uh 1958. Um, I was raised Christian, uh, uh, socialist and pacifist. Uh, my father was

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active in church and, and, and labor affairs. Uh, he never, uh, voted Democratic until 1948 when, when he felt he didn't have the luxury of, of, uh, of voting, uh, non non-democratic, and that was the first time he voted Democratic was in 1948. How come he

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didn't vote for Roosevelt and so forth in the early? He was, he was still, he was still voting for, uh, for Norman Thomas and voting for the SP and voting and voting socialist until 1948. Another big figure was Musti in the Fellowship of Reconciliation. He was

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pacifist during the Second World War. Uh, so I, and, uh, so I, I was raised in a, in a family that was, uh, that was political, that was resistant to the, to the government in, uh, in, in many ways, and, uh, uh. And so on. So

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I, I did have that, that sort of, uh, you mentioned, you mentioned the word labor. Did your dad have any contact with the labor movement as such in Spokane, Washington? He did. He served on, on, on church labor, uh, things, and I was, I was only

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in the 4th or 5th grade. I don't know. I know that he went out to a lot of meetings and so forth. I don't know exactly what his, uh, uh, role was, uh, in San Diego. He was, I, I recall going on FOR, uh. Fellowship of

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reconciliation, picnics and so forth. I don't recall that much of a labor connection in his, in his activities in San Diego. While I was at Oberlin College, uh, he did run for the school board in San Diego and he was red baited. They had mock photographs

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of him attending, uh, uh, communist activities and so forth, and he was sort of driven out of San Diego and while I was in college took a church in. Uh, Los Angeles. So there, there is, there was that kind of political background and history. You mentioned,

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uh, did you mention what he was doing in Spokane? He was a preacher. He had a church. He had a church in Spokane and then he had a church in San Diego. Then he had a church in. Uh, Los Angeles. Uh, I think my, my father

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had three periods of, of, of things that he did in Turkey. He was there in the 20s as a YMCA secretary and he was involved in relief for the Armenians and so on. I think that kind of radicalized him. Then he had a church in Hell's

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Kitchen, and I think that had was a, was a formative experience for him. He went back to, he married, he went back to Robert College, uh, as a, uh, as a, as a Uh, professor there as a teacher teaching English and religion and then after that,

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uh, and, and my best memories of him are as a, as a, as as a preacher, but, uh, an activist preacher. Yeah, what, what was the town, um, that Robert's College was in? That was in Istanbul. Oh, that, oh, OK, that was in Istanbul back in

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Istanbul, and that was, that's where I was. Do you know how we ever got there at all, how we got to Istanbul. Uh I think it was because of his, he, I don't know what first got him out there as a wise, he was an unmarried

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Y secretary in, in Istanbul in the, in 28 or something like that, and I think he just liked uh Turkey and, and, and Istanbul and an opportunity came to go back and uh and hold a position at Robert College, so he did that. After he retired

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from the active ministry, he actually Went back to Istanbul again in the 60s as the preacher at what was called the Dutch chapel, which was the Protestant church in Istanbul and they rotated. They had a Brit in and then they'd have someone from the Netherlands and

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then they'd have an American for like two year terms or something to the English language thing. So, so he had a strong connection with, with Istanbul. I don't, I don't recall what was his original denomination? Did you mention? Yeah, he came out a very conservative one.

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It was Dutch Reform. What he ended up in was the United Presbyterian Church. Uh, which, uh, uh, was, uh, a very conservative branch of the Presbyterian Church later united with the, the more mainstream Presbyterian Church, uh. And uh his, his politics in in in the church

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that he ended up in didn't really fit and I think that caused him uh some, some difficulties throughout his life. I mean kind of uh holding his politics and his, his religion together. Yeah, yeah, um. When did he, when did he come back towards Spokane? Do

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you, do you know what year it was? I was born in 32, so he would have come back to Spokane uh in about uh 1933 or 1934. I definitely remember the WPA workers out in front of our street and I remember people coming around to the

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back porch and uh uh we give them yard work and food and so on. So I, I, in that sense, I caught the tail end of the, the depression and. Hmm. OK, why Oberlin College? Um I got a, um, a, a good scholarship uh there. I

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had a uh honors scholarship that required me to keep a B average and I was kind of afraid about that, so I overdid. Phi Beta Kappa and uh and uh so forth. um I also was offered a uh a board job. I didn't quite get a,

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a full ride, um. I had to pay for my uh for my room, but, uh, it was, it was a very attractive offer, uh, financially and also I think my parents thought that it, it had the reputation of, of being a, uh, you know, it was

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a top liberal arts college but also kind of I think they thought of it, it was known to be a safe place for your daughter because they had. No car rule. You can't have cars at Oberlin College and so on, but I think I think it

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was also thought to be a safe place for their son, and I must say that after I left home, the only time I've been in a church is for a wedding or for a funeral, and they sort of blamed Oberlin College for Uh, ceasing, ceasing to,

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uh, be involved in any way with the Christian faith. When you were at Oberlin, um, you're active in a student co op movement, um. Can you tell me how you decide to get active in that and how you move away from being, uh, what you were

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thinking was that you're moving away from being active in church? Or participant in any way in church. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I mean, I, I, I actually, the, the Presbyterian church I belong to had kind of adult baptism, and I didn't, I didn't actually

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join the church until I was a junior or senior in high school, and then it was more out of a sense of duty or obligation. I just don't think I ever really was religious. I mean, my father used to, used to take me on his pastoral

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rounds, and he'd come into a house where somebody is Uh, just, you know, teenagers committed suicide or something like that, and he'd tell them that it would be all for the best or God moves in mysterious ways, and I thought, well, why don't they slug him

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and instead they would be comforted by his remarks, but I, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't know, I just, I, I, I, I just don't think I was of a Uh, religious temperament. The two things I recall from, from my days as a student

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at Oberlin that are sort of relevant to becoming involved in union work was, first, I just was very resistant to authority and being told what to do, and I was one of, one of the organizers of a student strike at Oberlin. They had required, they were

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called required chapel, but it wasn't religious. It was, it was really a required assembly. All students had to attend and you had to leave a slip with your name on it that you had attended and if you didn't attend those then things were done to you

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and so on and that just seemed ridiculous. So we had a we had a rally, we had flares we were speaking in the light of these of these flares urging students to protest and we were successful. Students who attended the assemblies turned in unsigned attendance cards

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and so on and we basically turned the assembly into a Uh, a voluntary activity and a great many people continued to go because they had good speakers. Bertrand Russell spoke. I mean, you know, there's no reason to require, uh, people to do that if they didn't

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choose to go or if they had a good reason for not going. They should, you know, so I just, I just didn't like the idea of, of being required to go to something and, uh, and so we were able to, uh, to, to stop that. The

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1st 3 years I was at Oberlin, I worked, uh, in one of the regular dorms and I got free board. Uh, but that was, uh, you know, I, I, I, I actually a pots and pans boy, that's one of the, yeah. Not the, not the greatest,

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uh, uh, board job to, uh, uh, to have. In my senior year, I signed up to, uh, uh, be a member of a student co op and the deal with the student co-ops which were well established at Oberlin when I was a student there, I was

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that instead of, uh, paying. Administration to feed you, you hired your own cook and helped, helped the cook out and you fed yourself and the goal was to do it for a lot less than you had to pay to have the university feed you in one

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of their in one of their um Um, dining, dining houses, uh, and for some reason each, each year the, the group that was going to be in the co op the next year met and they, they had to elect some, uh, some officers and for some

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reason I hadn't been in the co op the previous years and there had been a lot of people that had been in the co op for 2 or 3 years. But I was elected, and I think probably from my involvement in the student strike and this

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and that, I don't know. Anyway, I was elected the buyer manager, which meant that I had a lot of responsibilities for stocking the place and establishing the different duty rosters and and and stuff like that. It involved quite a bit of organizing and it, and it

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was also kind of competitive because the idea was that you would try to get the co op through that year at a lower percentage than what it costs to eat in the uh in the college boarding houses. So I think the previous record had been 57%

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that students had had to pay 50% of the college board bill to uh to eat at the co op and I think I hit 53%. Uh, I was doing blind. Full tests we were buying these dairy cows that they couldn't sell for meat because the fat

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was so yellow and so on and people complained about the color of the fat and we did blindfold tests on that and we used mixed powdered milk with whole milk and we did blindfold tests on that because people complained about that. I don't know. I really

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got into the idea of we're going to do it ourselves and we're going to do it a whole lot cheaper and at that time anyway, I think I set up. Uh, so there's a competitive edge there. I, I, I, I think I set a, uh, a,

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a percentage, uh, record. I think we piled in that year was our cost, uh, our people were 53% of the, uh, cost, uh, at a college dining hall. So that was, that was, that was sort of, uh. Well, you might start with, with, uh, with, with,

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with organizing and instead of having others do it, just do it yourself and do it better and, and do it cheaper and so on, yeah. So already as a kid you've picked up on two long traditions. In American history on the labor side, the co op

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movement and the strike idea, yeah, oh yeah, so yeah, I want, yeah, so yeah, I did, I did. Yeah, the other, the other thing then, uh, uh, generally we hear about faculty members that refused uh to sign the loyalty oath, but it may not have been

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realized by a lot of people, but they were requiring graduate students to, uh, sign the loyalty oath too because if you're a teaching assistant, not if you're just a graduate student and, and you weren't actually teaching, but if you were teaching and you're in an institution

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that required the, uh, the loyalty oath, and you had to, uh, to sign it. And the University of Washington had, there's been a lot of controversy about that. There had been refusal. Users there that had lost their jobs, a guy named Scoop Phillips, who then ended

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up as a sign painter here in, uh, uh, in, in San Francisco and so on. But there'd been other people on the left. Melvin Raider, who's, who's, you know, a kind of radical faculty member who said, Well, we got to keep radical faculty in on the

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faculty and who had signed and so on. And so I talked to Rader at length and to, to other, other professors there. But what this is the UW University of Washington, where I'm a graduate student as a graduate student in, uh, in philosophy. The first year

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I was there I had a Woodrow Wilson fellowship that was a complete total free ride. I didn't, but, uh, the next year I was offered a teaching assistantship and I refused it and because it required a loyalty oath and I worked various jobs including as a

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as a drill press operator on a, so you actually didn't take the TA ship because of that. Oh no, I was a loyalty oath refuser. Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't sign. I mean it. Seemed sort of quixotic to, to my professors. OK, the year after that,

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and, and, uh, I completed my MA and I had an offer of a teaching assistantship from, from Washington. I also had one from Cornell to go there after I got my MA to take a PhD. Both required the loyalty oath and I refused both teaching assistantships.

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And then the university, uh, the department of philosophy at Washington went out of its way and they managed to, to scrounge up some predoctoral. Money or something of that sort and they gave it to me and I worked as a teaching assistant ship but not under

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that classification or title. I was on, on some kind of grant money or fellowship money uh that did not require a, uh, a, a loyalty oath. And so I took my PhD, uh, and my first teaching job after I took my PhD was I went back

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to Oberlin College. One of my professors there is on sabbatical. It's a one-year sabbatical replacement appointment. Auburn was a private college, it didn't require the law of the oath. The year after that, 59 to 60, I went to the University of California at Riverside again replacing

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somebody who's on sabbatical, a one year appointment, and at that time, the law of the oath was held up in the courts so that there was an injunction against requiring the law of the oath, so I didn't sign a law of the oath to teach at

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the University of, uh, of California, uh, at, at Riverside, uh. But I've been told when I was at Oberlin and I talked to the faculty there about it, and they said, you know, it's going to come on the private colleges if they take any federal money

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or anything, and they all do or any kind of government money, they're going to have to have the loyalty oath. So you're just not going to be able to teach in the United States if you continue this, and I, I did apply for jobs in Canada,

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uh, in Australia, and, uh, I did get a job at the University of Alberta, uh, and I taught there from 1960 to 1963. And then I had to make up my mind what I was going to do about this, uh, either become a Canadian citizen because

00:16:14.820 - 00:16:27.980

I felt I couldn't vote up there and I just felt like a, a spectator. And oddly enough, one of the things that affected my decision was that they showed this film, uh, Operation Abolition on the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was showing up there in a

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room at Alberta and I was just thinking, oh God, you know, this is terrible and I, I, I just, you know, maybe I should go try to get back to the United States. I mean, I, you know, or else I've got to become a Canadian citizen.

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There's a lot of stuff going on there, the formation of the New Democratic Party and so on. I've got to become politically active up here in, uh, in Canada, uh, and, uh. So I got and I got an offer from San Francisco State. I'd, I'd met

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people from the San Francisco State Department in 1959. I read a paper at the American Philosophical Association meeting and uh Art Berman and, and Rudy Weingartner were there and they liked my paper and we went out and talked about it afterwards and San Francisco State actually

00:17:09.130 - 00:17:21.930

gave me an offer for the fall of 1960, but there were two problems. It wasn't a full-time job, although they thought it would turn into that, and it required the loyalty oath. OK. I turned down San Francisco State in 1960 and I took the job at

00:17:21.930 - 00:17:37.940

the University of Alberta. OK. I, San Francisco State gave me another offer. It was a full-time job. It was right in my field, ethics in 19, uh for fall of 1963, and I thought, well, the other thing that happened was that the loyalty oath had been

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changed. The original oath that I had objected to was an oath that required that you swear that you wouldn't believe certain things. And, you know, this may sound funny, but my philosophical view was that you couldn't choose your beliefs. Discovered your beliefs, you could decide to

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act on them or not act on them, but asking people to swear that they wouldn't have certain beliefs was, was to me incoherent. I mean how could I swear that I wouldn't wake up one morning and believe in the violent overthrow of the United States, you

00:18:05.280 - 00:18:18.180

know? How could I say what I was going to come to believe as a philosopher it was not so much it was partly political, but it was also because it was just political. You signed to keep your position and do something as radar. Argued for at

00:18:18.180 - 00:18:35.300

the University of Washington, it was also partly philosophical. The new oath just required that you prescribe certain actions. You swore that you wouldn't join certain organizations and you wouldn't, and it was advocacy rather than belief, and that was philosophically acceptable to me. That made sense, swearing

00:18:35.300 - 00:18:46.860

that you wouldn't do certain things. I didn't see how you could swear not to believe certain things, but I did see how you could swear not to do certain things. So I decided, OK. I'm going to take the job at San Francisco. I'm going to go

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to San Francisco State and I'm going to sign the oath. So they sent me the oath, OK, and what it says on the oath is that nobody can take any money for administering this oath. OK, I'm in Canada. I've got to get that oath administered before

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I can be accepted for the job at San Francisco State. So it's going to have to be administered in Canada. In Canada they don't have notary publics because the lawyers there didn't let any business get away. To go see a lawyer. They do the notarizing work.

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So I went in to see a Canadian lawyer and I said, Look, I'm in an odd situation. I've got this thing that has to be notarized. On the other hand, it's from the United States government or the government of the state of California, and it says

00:19:26.840 - 00:19:36.940

that no funds can be taken for administering this oath. And I said, I really don't think the government of California can tell you what to do or what you can charge and so on and so. He said, you know, you give me the oath, I pay

00:19:36.940 - 00:19:49.960

you. That's, that's cool. And the Canadian lawyer looked at it and he said, Well, I don't think the California government can tell me what I can charge for or not either, he said, but this is just making my day and making me feel so glad to

00:19:49.960 - 00:20:02.620

be a Canadian because they often, you know, kind of down Canadian and so on. He said, I just feel great to be a Canadian, he said, and I'm going to administer this oath to you for free, and so on. Held up my hand, took the oath,

00:20:02.860 - 00:20:20.970

uh, signed it, and, uh, and headed for, uh, uh, uh, San Francisco. That was, that was sort of, I think that in, in terms of, uh. Uh, before, uh, San Francisco, uh, state, that's, that's probably as much as I can think of or needs to be

00:20:21.080 - 00:20:41.060

said, yeah, that's very, very good, you know, and, and, and much appreciated. OK, um. Tell me what happens to uh you now you're down at San Francisco State University, um, the airman is down there. There's this whole 9 unit load thing um that's very, very important

00:20:41.080 - 00:20:51.830

in terms of union activity, you know, how do you get involved in all that? I mean, it sounds like at this point it's sort of a natural for you, you know, you always look what what are the issues see, I came here, I was 31, I

00:20:51.830 - 00:21:05.990

got my PhD. I went straight through. I never took time off. I got my PhD at 26. I've taught for 5 years actually, so I have a history. I actually have a background in student activism and so on, but I hit San Francisco State. I'm, I'm,

00:21:06.120 - 00:21:19.310

I'm 31 years old and I look young for my 31 years of age, and I'm Art Berman's office mate, you know. So you talk to Dick Axon. And he'll say, oh God, I remember you, you fuzzy cheeked little kid coming in there to, uh, to Art

00:21:19.310 - 00:21:30.150

Berman's office and, uh, and being totally bewildered by everything that was going on and so on, and that was that in some ways that was kind of a, a, a, a, a mistake on me. I mean, you know, I had, I had some commitments. I had

00:21:30.150 - 00:21:43.420

some ideas and, and how, and how to do, how to do stuff and, uh, and so on, although. Nothing like, I mean, art is just being art's office mate was uh extraordinary. At times it seemed like it was the center of the, of the universe. I

00:21:43.420 - 00:21:55.500

mean, because it was so the I get there, the cat, I, and I wasn't active in this. I was just kind of getting acclimated, uh, but the, uh, the, uh, Cadillac, the auto roll sit-ins. Going on, people are coming in about that all the time and

00:21:55.500 - 00:22:13.660

so forth. I immediately joined the union, and I believe that I would have done that whether I was arts office mate or not. Well, Your Honor, expand a little on art. Uh, yeah, well, he's gonna be, you know, in the course of this interview, uh, he'll

00:22:13.660 - 00:22:25.020

be, he'll be coming up all the time, but he was tremendously, and this is so crucial to us later in the strike and so on. I mean, he had been one of the organizers of the protests against the House Un-American Activities Committee, and that had, uh,

00:22:25.230 - 00:22:39.550

and, and, and his, and his wife Sue Berman had been involved in the, uh, freeway protests and chaining themselves to trees in the panhandle, and they'd been active in Democratic politics, the Young Democratics Club or whatever it's called for. Uh, for ages in, uh, uh, in,

00:22:39.720 - 00:22:54.470

in San Francisco, but, and as a, as a result of the, uh, protest against the House Un-American Activities Committee, uh, Herb Williams and Art had founded the, the AFT Local at San Francisco State. They'd flipped for who would be card number 1, and Herb Williams won

00:22:54.470 - 00:23:13.250

the flip, and he was card number 1, and Art was card number 2, and then he'd gone on to, uh, uh, organize locals on other, other campuses and, and was the, the, the, the, the. The moving force behind faculty unionism in California and you know the

00:23:13.250 - 00:23:26.780

TAs in the UC system just won something and they say they've been fighting for it for 15 years. I mean hell, we were, we were involved in helping set up. Locals back in the, in the 60s and so on. I mean, that, that's, so, so it

00:23:26.780 - 00:23:44.660

wasn't, it was primarily in the, uh, in our system and, and at one time there was thoughts that we would have, have all higher education unions together that didn't work out and uh uh and, and, and so forth, but uh Yeah, art was just The, the

00:23:45.350 - 00:24:00.110

tremendous, uh, uh, activist. I mean he just was he charismatic? Is there a person? Oh yeah, yeah, he had, he had, he had, he had, he had a style and, uh, he'd, uh, march around a building blowing a horn and, uh, expecting the walls to fall

00:24:00.110 - 00:24:20.120

down almost and be surprised they hadn't and, uh, so on tremendous nerve, tremendous imagination, and, uh, uh, a great deal of, uh, uh, charisma and, and, and wit, yeah, it's just, uh. Uh, Uh, uh, extraordinary person. Later on, we'll, we'll, you know, we lost the election

00:24:20.120 - 00:24:34.770

in California and the primary reason was that they froze out of that election. I mean we bounced back and forth on the leadership in the statewide thing and that's, and I think we should talk about that. I just kind of say that at the home, you

00:24:34.770 - 00:24:47.260

know, I think that's that that was really unfortunate that we should have won that CB election and if we had, I think things would have been. In diff different in in in higher education we'll and we'll get to that we'll get to that that's that's that's

00:24:47.260 - 00:25:03.610

a ways down that's a ways down the line down the road that's some years that's some some years later. OK, so I arrived in 1963 and most of the first year I'm just getting uh Uh, kind of acclimated and, uh, Uh What the hell did I

00:25:03.610 - 00:25:17.930

do in '63? I don't know. They elected me acting chair of the department, uh, in, uh, uh, Weingartner went on leave. I was just been there a year, 63 to 64, and I'm elected uh acting uh chair of, maybe I got a little charisma. I don't

00:25:17.930 - 00:25:31.110

know about. I don't know. Could be. I got elected buyer manager of the co op and now I'm elected acting chair of the, of the department uh in 60, uh, uh, in, in '64. I got to know some of the students. Guy Sandler was a student

00:25:31.110 - 00:25:42.710

in my classes. He's one of the students that set up uh the experimental college. He said, God, we just discovered it, you know, student government controls over a million bucks or something of that sort, he said, and, uh, so they took over the student government, they

00:25:42.710 - 00:25:57.270

set up the experimental college, they started the tutorial program, so I was new to the students and was aware of, of some of the things that, uh, that students were doing at uh uh at uh at San Francisco State. Uh, so, uh, I, I became acting

00:25:57.270 - 00:26:11.790

chair of the department. Uh, the, the second year I was here, uh, that would be, uh, '63, '64, '65. And now, when I came here, I knew I was going to be teaching a 4 course load. I hadn't taught that at Alberta. I hadn't taught that

00:26:11.790 - 00:26:23.310

at Oberlin. I hadn't taught that at UC Riverside, but I mean, hey, a lot of people taught it and seemed to manage it, and so I didn't think it would be that big a problem. But I must tell you, when I got here, I think partly

00:26:23.310 - 00:26:36.970

for elitist and snobbish reasons, I just didn't like saying I taught a 9 unit, I taught a 12 unit load because that was sort of You know, if you were good in your profession, you didn't teach a 12 year old, so it was partly that, but

00:26:36.970 - 00:26:47.410

partly it was, it turned out that just that extra course kind of got in the way. I mean if you're trying to do a lot of different things and, uh, and, and, and so on, it made it almost impossible to schedule a two day or three

00:26:47.410 - 00:27:01.970

day schedule. Uh, it meant almost always you had to have a 5 day schedule. Uh, it just got in the way and I didn't like that. OK, so. And, and also it seemed to me an ideal issue because it could be done as a non-economic issue

00:27:01.970 - 00:27:15.180

and it could just be done on the job, OK. Uh, so, as we play with the 9 unit load down through the years, I mean sometimes it's going to require a 25% funding increase to cover the extra courses, but sometimes it can just be an arrangement

00:27:15.450 - 00:27:28.520

to that we think will be of benefit to the faculty and it won't hurt the students if you're teaching 100 students a year and you're teaching them in 4 sections of 25, you might think you teach 45 students in one section and 35 in another and

00:27:28.520 - 00:27:41.140

then a nice small 20 unit class and that nobody's going to notice that. The difference except the faculty they're going to have a 3 course load and it's going to make a big difference to them and the students aren't going to aren't going to suffer and

00:27:41.250 - 00:27:53.830

so on. So the 9 unit load can be handled as a non-economic demand and it's also something you can just do on the on the job, just, you know, just drop a 4th course and so on. But it also turned out to be as I got

00:27:53.830 - 00:28:06.600

interested in it, I actually read all the damn that system. On formulas, everything in the state college and university system runs off of a formula, something called the staffing formula. I read all these formulas. Most formulas are driven by something. Most of them are driven by

00:28:06.600 - 00:28:23.670

full-time student equivalents. So you have a student taking 9 units, a student taking 6, you add them together. That's one student. So staffing generally runs off of full-time equivalent students. As I remember, the toilet paper budget runs off of actual bodies on campus. Rather than full-time

00:28:23.670 - 00:28:37.390

equivalent students, and security actually runs off of the number of bodies, so the, so the security budget and other budgets, some of them run off the number of bodies on campus, some run off the number of, of full-time equivalent students, and so on. So I read

00:28:37.390 - 00:28:50.870

all that stuff. I dug into all that stuff. And I realized that there are various tricks and devices that you could use to rig the formula. So what I proposed to the philosophy department was that using their rules and their system we teach a three course.

00:28:51.390 - 00:29:01.740

Uh, load and I had all this stuff all worked out all I'm not gonna go into the detail. It was very complicated, but I, but I had it, I had it all wired up and I was chair. I brought, so I scheduled a department meeting. We're

00:29:01.740 - 00:29:12.160

gonna go on the 3 course load and I got there. I've handed out all this stuff which seems to me to be really great and nobody will move the damn motion to go on a 3 course load and I'm getting really excited. And frustrated and finally

00:29:12.160 - 00:29:23.700

I say, Art, will you chair this meeting for me for a minute because I was chair and so Art said, Sure, I'll be glad to chair it. And so I said, I move that the philosophy department go on a 3 course load next fall. And I

00:29:23.700 - 00:29:33.940

said, I want to speak in favor of this motion. I said, Look, I don't even have tenure. I've only been here 1 year. I'm impetuous. Nobody's going to be hurt by this. We'll either get the Course load or if there's problems or so on, I'll take

00:29:33.940 - 00:29:46.860

all the blame. Rudy's gone. I'm just an acting chair. Everybody is completely safe. Nobody's going to get hurt except maybe me, and I don't care. I mean, you know, let's do it, OK? And so they all voted to do it and we did it and so

00:29:46.860 - 00:30:00.160

we came back that fall on a 3 course load. Now is this, did you do this as As the AFT local or as it oh no, it was not it was not AFT and it wasn't taken it was fiddled. I mean, I fiddled the books so

00:30:00.160 - 00:30:14.680

it looked like we were teaching 4 courses. In fact, we're de jury for de facto 3, OK? And I, and I do this as an exemplary act just to show that it can be done. So we're, it's known the philosophy department is only teaching 3 courses.

00:30:14.770 - 00:30:25.810

I go around to all the other departments and I say, look, not all of them. I go around to them. I remember going to English. Eric Salmon sitting in the front row, Dan Knapp and so on. I say, you guys can go on the, on the

00:30:25.810 - 00:30:37.210

three course load, and I'll help you, and I'll help you do it. And I spread the word throughout the throughout the system. I think I do go to a state college. I think I am a representative from the from the local maybe going to the state

00:30:37.210 - 00:30:50.770

college council, and I tell other people Fullerton philosophy department goes on a 9 unit load fairly quickly. San Diego goes on a on a on a 3 course load in the philosophy department and there within a few years they have the whole school on it. Eventually

00:30:51.190 - 00:31:03.070

the whole, the whole, it's easier actually if you're fiddling it according to the rules you work with larger units. For example, in the school of humanities I could put the English department on a 3 course load. I did put the philosophy on a 3 course. There's

00:31:03.070 - 00:31:18.750

no way I could do foreign language for various reasons about foreign language instruction, the smallness of the of the 4th year class. There's just, you know, it's. Complicated technical sort of sort of issue. So anyway, I'm committed to the 3 course load in various places in

00:31:18.750 - 00:31:32.410

the system are doing this. This is outside the union, but it has possibilities and openings for the for the union. OK, OK, we're just about to the end of the end of the side. Let me just