This piece reflects the views of the author, Porter Wheeler, and not those of Emerald Media Group. Send your columns or submissions about our content or campus issues to [email protected]. 
Porter Wheeler was an opinion columnist for the Daily Emerald from Fall 2021 to Summer 2022.
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Recently, the Emerald opinion desk published a column about the UO Student Workers Union that was egregiously misinformed. In the spirit of healthy discourse, and as an Emerald alum that went to write for the nationally syndicated magazine The Nation, I wish to push back.

The piece posited that the problem between UOSW and the university is a lack of “respect,” with reference to a strategy to flood administrator’s emails. The conclusion reached is that RAs like the author are being neglected and the union needs a more “delicate structure.”
My issue with this article is its complete inability to recognize power. The grievous error is equating the email tactic with the university engaging in illegal union busting by refusing to recognize the over 2,000 students who signed cards. The disrespect is not equal. The university can disrespect you by paying poverty wages that can’t make rent and making you labor in abusive workplaces, while the students can only disrespect an email’s spam folder.

As an aside, the article never explains why we should care about admins’ emails being spammed; we’ve paid enough tuition to be rude to them, and they pay low enough wages to deserve it. Plus, doesn’t their refusal to recognize the union display a larger lack of respect? Why must students be held to a greater level of decorum?

The university or any system will not cede power without another force leveraging it. If the author wanted to discuss tactics of leveraging power they would’ve floated alternatives, but they didn’t. This is because it seems the author is solely concerned with the perception of strategies. Thus, tactics are not good or bad based on results but instead on their “respect.”

However, respect is a bad way to evaluate relations between an institution that dictates wages and workers who want better conditions. One is a multi-million dollar public university and the other is a group of students. To reduce them to equal power brokers that must follow the same civil etiquette is journalistic malpractice.

And even to the point about RAs being disenfranchised — potentially a valid discussion — is never addressed or articulated how this particular strategy uniquely hurt RAs. Any student is perfectly valid to feel uncertain about strategies, but the article is naive to think that being nicer will make the university cede power.

The article is asking movements to kneecap themselves to be compassionate to systems that may be compassionate to them in language, but will continue to dominate them materially. Moreover, the article was incorrect before it was published; dining workers just won a pay raise via collective action, so the email spamming clearly had no harmful effects on students’ ability to organize.

Student journalism is an incredible tool. By nature of our economic and social position, students are more aware of inequality, and whatever resources or professionalism we lack is countered by our freedom to critically examine issues by interrogating power dynamics. I do not see this quality in the Emerald.

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Editor’s Note: The column Wheeler references is “Byrd: The student worker’s union needs a more delicate structure.”