Center Student Opinion on Shopping Week

Shopping week continues to be one of the most hotly contested issues on campus. Ever at the forefront of this controversy, the Faculty Council — the Faculty of Arts and Science’s highest governing body — will vote Wednesday on whether to endorse a proposal set to significantly impact the status of shopping week and student life more broadly for years to come.

This proposal, which was presented by the chairs of a faculty committee investigating course registration — Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh and Philosophy professor Bernhard Nickel — suggests two primary measures: first, to postpone a final decision on the status of shopping week until spring 2022; and second, to form a new committee to more deeply investigate trends in enrollment, as a function of a broad range of University issues.

As the Council prepares to vote on this proposal, we believe it should recognize that shopping week is an issue that first and foremost affects undergraduate students and graduate student workers. Given the pressing and deeply relevant issues that currently face both groups, we believe that postponing any decision on shopping week is imperative.

Until graduate students have fully established their institutional standing as a newly formed union, they will not be able to adequately express their collective opinion on shopping week. With its ambitious list of 80 bargaining goals, the union expects that reaching a holistic agreement with the University will be an uphill battle. The first months of the bargaining process have been marked by disagreement and deadlock, resulting in only four agreements as of January.

The Council should be hyperconscious of this process when it votes on Wednesday, as frankly, graduate students are perhaps the most affected by shopping week. Every semester, shopping week forces graduate students to face significant job uncertainty, unsure of what or even if they will have the opportunity to teach and receive a much-needed stipend. The proposal smartly identifies graduate student unionization as an important factor for the new committee to consider as they investigate enrollment trends. But unionization is not merely a factor to be investigated by the committee. The perspective of that union — as the collective voice of the very group most affected by shopping week – must be taken into account. Until the unionization process is complete, these graduate student workers will not have the ability to adequately or completely represent opinions and interests that are vital in ensuring that the proposed system works for everyone.

Moreover, as we have skeptically noted, the administration has inundated the undergraduate body with requests for feedback on student life in the form of seemingly innumerable surveys. Not only do these surveys speak to a high demand being placed on undergraduates at the moment, but it suggests that there are a number of arguably more important issues at the forefront of undergraduates’ minds right now, not least among them sexual misconduct and safety and inclusion in campus spaces.

Given that a productive investigation into enrollment trends will necessarily include undergraduate contributions, the Council should be aware of these demands and preoccupations that have been both circumstantially and administratively placed on undergraduate shoulders.

Extending the timeline for a shopping week decision would likely result in the opportunity to gather more accurate and representative data about undergraduate interests and enrollment, as well as to potentially utilize the results of ongoing investigations into student life and campus climate.

We have so often been critical of the University and its various governing bodies for seeming to drag their feet on issues of enormous importance to student life. On this issue, however, we hope the Faculty Council votes to slow down, acknowledging the fact that undergraduate students and graduate student workers are not in position at this moment to adequately contribute to what could very well be a historic pedagogical decision.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.