Dear Editor,

A new year is upon us, and with it, new opportunities for growth. So how will we use this opportunity for measuring renewal in Western Illinois? Will we take this new moment to recreate a real, living community, to create peace and restore good will among us? This is my prayer.
It is no secret that the past year has been unhealthy for our shared community. We ended 2017 with talk of low morale and discontent among us. At the University, we spent more than a year defining ourselves as two fictional, warring factions – “the bourgeoisie administrators v. the proletarian professionals.”
New Year’s Day marked the 550th since “contract negotiations” began. These 550 days of failure came to define us in 2017. Both parties to the table are equally culpable for the failure to serve us properly. But worse, too many laypeople chose to take sides, as if “choosing sides” in a failed outcome gives either side plausible deniability for the failure.
In 2017, too many of us intentionally chose to walk away from our colleagues and friends. We chose to define “them” as greedy, as mean-spirited, as stiff-necked, and self-serving. We defined our colleagues as “the problem,” rather than acknowledging that the problem is partially self-made. Though external contingencies framed and structured our shared problem, it was we who chose to create the unhealthy sensibilities that divided and defined us.
Perhaps we did so because blaming others for our shared problems seemingly dismisses us from responsibility for actually having to solve the problem. But at what cost to our shared community? Are we willing to continue down this path of making enemies of ourselves?
In the end, everyone knows there will in fact be a contract. And I am willing to bet the new contract will look remarkably similar to the last. I have openly asked leaders on both sides of the table. They actually seem to agree on nearly everything, including the essential nature of minima lanes for minimizing gender wage gaps.
My greatest fear is that in that end, when we actually do arrive at reasonable contract similar to what we once had, we will find that we unjustifiably will have wrecked our shared community in doing so.
We need not continue along this path. We can choose to solve this shared problem in such a way as to produce a win-win situation. We can create the greatest good for the greatest number. We can do whatever it is we wish. We can be reasonable people.
Please. Let us each take this new moment to commit toward recreating our real, living community. Let us each work intentionally too make this year remarkably different from the last. In 2018, let us choose to redefine our public commons, our shared space, as one driven by our love for one another, as manifested through mutual aid. This is my prayer.

Robert J. Hironimus-Wendt
Professor of Sociology
Western Illinois University