Union UIC faculty says, "UIC works because we do." On strike Tuesday.

I spent a good part of the 80s as a returning student at the University of Illinois Chicago campus.

It’s central location and what was then an affordable price tag meant it was accessible to me and thousands of other Chicago working class students.

It isn’t a pretty campus.

Many referred to it with irony as “Harvard on Halsted.”

With its brutalist architecture and its location next to the newly rebuilt Jane Byrne Circle interchange, it makes visually clear what it is: An urban university with students drawn from the city’s neighborhoods.

To quote Nelson Algren, “there may be lovelier lovelies, but never a lovely so real.”

I went to UIC as an older student, an undergrad and a grad student, mostly in the Art department and in the College of Education.

Let me tell you that the faculty in both schools were top notch.

What made UIC work was and is the faculty.

Next Tuesday, unless something significant happens, union faculty will be on strike.

The top issue is money.

They’ve been negotiating with the university administration for nine months.

They bargained for 12 hours Monday and agreed to resume bargaining tomorrow, Wednesday.

The faculty union has also made student and faculty mental health central issue of bargaining.

The union has asked for both pay and student supports such as free psychological and neuropsychological testing to address mental health and the faculty’s corresponding increased workloads.

Union UIC faculty last went on strike in 2014.

UIC faculty strike 2014.

I was with them then.

I’m with them now.