Herald and News
by Becca Robbins
April 10, 2021
On January 22, 2019, the faculty at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, went on strike. Their walkout lasted for 20 days, before the union and administration agreed on a contract and faculty returned to work.
The picket lines at Wright Start marked the most recent example of a high-profile faculty strike at a public university in the country.
Klamath Falls could soon be home to the next. Faculty at the Oregon Institute of Technology are currently threatening to strike later this month.
Until 2019, there had never been a strike at Wright State. But that’s when the university brought in an external attorney to negotiate on the administration’s behalf. To Noeleen McIlvenna, strike organizer at Wright State at the time, that decision changed the tenor of negotiations. The lawyer wasn’t coming from a place of familiarity with the environment of the college or any previous relationship with the faculty, she felt. This, she said, led to more contentious talks and negotiations stalled. Eventually, faculty felt a strike was their only option.