Identity of unity through diversity
The Rutgers Council of AAUP-AFT Chapters is a huge organization at a sprawling university: twenty-six hundred faculty, twelve thousand graduate students. Of these many are philosophers, psychologists, engineers and businessmen. The amalgamated nature of the union means the AAUP-AFT has never had a unified identity system.
Two things come to mind when one thinks about a university: its football team and its professors. Professors are the practitioners of education. As such, they are the bulk of the concept of a university. More than anything else, the AAUP-AFT is Rutgers.
While in one sense university is the sum of its parts, of which the professors are the most important, in another sense the AAUP-AFT is constitutionally opposed to the university. This sense is the university as employer, management and opposition.
Any identity for the AAUP-AFT must rectify the dual nature of the union as both core and nemesis of the University.
