Big Apple Blog

When catching the subway home yesterday I saw the following at the entrance to Columbia University.

Yep, that’s a giant rat with a look of bad intentions. As a former rat owner (eyes now tearing up) I wondered what the blow up rat was all about. There were police barricades set up and people with picket signs protesting. I could not read the signs so I decided to cross the street to see what was up.

I was expecting a janitor’s strike or perhaps students protesting sanitary conditions at the university. Or perhaps a student had been mugged by a rouge group of rats and students were seeking vengeance.

What did I actually find the purpose of the protest to be? A teaching and research assistants strike. The following comes from a flyer that I picked up:

Columbia University has an endowment of $4.5 billion dollars, larger than the gross national product of 95 countries around the world. It is one of the largest landholders in New York City and its president gets paid over $650,000 a year. Yet Columbia’s graduate employees make $18,000 a year, making it a hardship to support ourselves in New York City and almost impossible to support a family.

Sounds like a cause worth fighting for, but why do ya’ll have to go clowning rats like that? What does a big mean rat have to do with money and politics? Rats are innocent creatures that have a bad reputation. Without humans making a big mess, rats would not even be able to survive.

How about a big inflatable Rolex Watch? Or a fist full of dollars? Rat supporters of the world unite against this injustice of symbolism! Will I have to fight this cause alone? Probably.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 19th, 2005 at 9:33 am and is filed under New York. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.