Message-ID: <B0054433567@listserve.uwec.edu>
From: "2010 WI OH Day" <treeves@library.wisc.edu>
Subject: 2010 WI OH Day: UW--Madison Campus Voices
Date: Tue, 11 May 2010 09:17:14 -0500
UW—Madison Campus Voices: 1970 TAA Strike
Forty years ago this semester, another chapt
er in the history of UW—Madison and its student protest movement unfolded
. (For a timeline of UW—Madison student protest movement, see http://archives.library.wi
sc.edu/uwhistory.html.) This chapter invo
lved the classic struggle of labor versus management, as well as a generati
onal battle between the groups now called “The Baby Boomers” and “The
Greatest Generation.” Simply stated it was the 1970 TAA Strike.
Organized by UW—Madison graduate students
in 1966, the Teaching Assistants’ Association (TAA) entered into its firs
t bargaining sessions with the University in the summer of 1969 to negotiat
e TA funding, working conditions, and student roles in educational planning
. At the beginning of 1970, these sessions had not produced a mutually desi
red outcome, and TAA members voted to strike. The strike lasted from March
15 to April 13, 1970, ending that month with the very first contract for st
udent workers at UW-Madison and one of the first in the United States.
The UW—Madison Archives holds detailed inf
ormation on this strike in paper, visual, and audio formats. In the late 19
70s, former UW—Madison oral historian Laura Smail conducted over 30 inter
views with graduate students, faculty, and administrators to get their stor
ies, memories, and opinions about this historic labor action.
In this modern, digital era, this rich archi
val material should be made available to folks in places and in ways they c
an access them. The campus oral history progr
am—a part of the campus archives—has begun this task. Specifically, we
have put the full audio and transcripts (through the UW Digital Collections
Center) of the TAA Strike online. Also, we compiled an iTunesU album of au
dio clips and created a podcast and mini-movie that tell this story. Presen
ting this strike has become the first sub-project in what we have coined UW
—Madison Campus Voices project.
UW—Madison Campus Voices exists to (re)cap
ture, present, and preserve some of the strongest historical stories and me
mories of UW—Madison, through the people who lived them. We intend to pub
lish two more sub-projects (Sterling Hall Bombing & Badger Village) dur
ing the summer and early fall. And we envision more campus sub-projects and
perhaps a statewide attempt, working with Wisconsinites both on and off ca
mpus to find funding to gather and preserve historical documents and to pre
sent stories about those documents to a wider audience.
We hope those interested will go to the fron
t page of our UW—Madison Campus Voices project at http://archives.librar
y.wisc.edu/oral-history/campusvoices.html. From there one can click to
the UWDCC’s presentation of the full audio and transcripts, can listen to
our iTunesU album of TAA Strike narrators’ excerpts and our podcast, and
can watch the mini-movie. We must thank the
Brittingham Fund for their seed money to pilot this and the two future web
presentations and to hire the student staff, Katie Gleischman, Megan Falate
r, and Ellen Jacks, who worked on it.
For more information about UW—Madison Camp
us Voices, please contact Troy Reeves, head of the campus oral history prog
ram, at 608-890-1899, or at tre
eves@library.wisc.edu.