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Picket Line Epiphanies and a Bittersweet Epilogue.

On April 5, 2001, I rolled out of bed at 5 a.m. and turned on the news, hoping to hear that the University of Hawai’i Professional Assembly (UHPA) had reached a last-minute agreement with state negotiators to avert a strike scheduled to begin that morning. Instead, the strike was on and my two classes for the day scratched. Within the hour, I was due—in the role of picket captain—at the East-West Road entrance to the university’s flagship Manoa campus. Since Hawai’i public school teachers were also going out on strike, this day would be historic: The first statewide public education strike in American history. So why, on the way down to the picket site, did I feel less like a participant in history-in-the-making and more like someone heading toward a major fiasco? The image that kept recurring was of a handful of pickets standing haplessly by as faculty and students cavalierly crossed our lines. This image wasn’t complete paranoia: The run-up to the strike had been tortured with many UH faculty wondering out loud: “Do we have the strength and unity to mount an effective strike?” This is not to say we weren’t, after two years of working without a contract, hugely frustrated and angry. By taking every opportunity to publicly belittle the university faculty as incompetent, underworked and overpaid, Governor Ben Cayetano had stoked our anger. During Cayetano’s administration, state support for the university had declined more than 11 percent, while a steep hike in student tuition had driven enrollment down. At Manoa and other campuses, faculty positions had been savaged by attrition and cutbacks; the maintenance backlog stood at $167 million. Throughout this downward spiral, a passive UH administration had proved pathetically inept at THE NEA HIGHER EDUCATION JOURNAL 47