I have been a faithful Star-Bulletin reader for years, and while I did not always agree with your editorial viewpoints, I appreciated the reasonable tone with which your arguments were offered. Recently, I have been disappointed by the extreme scorn and disrespect shown by many of my fellow readers and your staff in their viewpoints on the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly contract negotiations.

Everyone who has attended an institute of higher education owes their instructors and professors a deep debt of gratitude. I have gained more from the classroom than just job skills. I came away with an education that opened up worlds of ideas that I had never considered or experienced. I did have a few classes with the “;boring professors”; that one writer decried, but these were far outnumbered by the brilliant, patient and passionate professors that I studied under at UH.

My English professors at UH-Manoa inspired me to take up teaching as well, and I currently lecture at Kapiolani Community College. My students sometimes call me “;professor,”; like many others who teach at the college level, even though I don't hold that rank. I teach a full load of four to five classes, but my pay is significantly less than that of my mother, who teaches one class in a public school.

The problem with using averages is that a few highly paid individuals get their salaries lumped in with those who make very little. There are people who question why a few faculty members have such high pay, but they forget that these are the people teaching our future doctors to perform surgery, showing our future lawyers and judges the ways of the law, and running our observatories and discovering cures for AIDS.

I find it sad that the newspaper is quick to trumpet the accomplishments of these distinguished faculty one day, then slams them so ruthlessly the next. Why do people think that doctors deserve high pay, but the people who teach the doctors do not? I don't begrudge my colleagues their higher salaries—I would hope that the public would want highly skilled professionals in the workplace.

The union fights for the majority of its poorest and most powerless members, and works just as hard for them as it does for its few wealthy members. The faculty simply want the chance for negotiation rather than a unilateral directive—the same right as any other union under law. No union should be labeled selfish for exercising its right to protect its members.

I, for one, am willing to sacrifice to help our state, but on terms that have been discussed and debated, rather than dictated.