Repeating Islands

As students and professors gear up for demonstrations and another major strike on campuses island-wide, president of the University of Puerto Rico José Ramón de la Torre, warned that professors have no right to strike.  In a radio interview on NotiUno, de la Torre said that people who decide to convene the strike at the expense of the institution will be “punished” in accordance to university regulations. However, he did not speak of dismissals.  

The president stressed that “The UPR is for professors and student to study, learn, teach and research. It is not for striking for homeland or against the war in wherever, or for any reason whatsoever. It is for this, for education. It is what we have.” He also underlined that the professors who voted en masse to approve the strike are simply trying to intimidate. He cautioned that the university will not allow such a strike to occur.  “We are not going to allow people that have no real commitment to the institution to affect our students,” he pointed out.  He brandished the usual warning: that, in a single day, the strike could lead the Middle States on Higher Education to remove the UPR’s accreditation, noting that to be discredited would amount to “a global disgrace.” President de la Torre called for “sensibility,” adding, “Enough already. I have been saying this all along and I told them what was going to happen prior to the disastrous strike of 62 days, in which all that was achieved was to damage the image of the University.”  

 On an international level, however, beyond the Damocles sword of the Middle States accreditation, many of those watching the progression of events from afar have wondered whether professors and students will stand by and allow the university to become unaffordable for the majority of students on the island, whether they will allow the administrators to demoralize the faculty and student body enough to encourage a “brain drain,” whether they will allow the university to be pruned, stamped down, and dismantled as a public university; and most declare that it would indeed be “a global disgrace” . . . not to strike.

For full article on President de la Torre’s warning (in Spanish), see http://www.elnuevodia.com/presidentedelauprlanzaadvertenciaaprofesores-824340.html

Photo from http://www.primerahora.com/joseramondelatorreeselectonuevopresidentedelaupr-360651.html