Author

Alexander Kulcsar (writer, actor, and filmmaker)

I worked for the faculty union at the University of Bridgeport as its only staff member from 1981 to 1992. My duties were numerous and varied: assistant to the president, assistant editor of publications, archivist, researcher, graphic artist, messenger, and factotum. I knew the campus community quite well in those days, having also been a student at one time, and sometimes worked for the administration doing page layout and graphic design. When I started at the union, the chapter newsletter was a two-sided sheet of white paper, mimeographed. We later moved up to 11×17 ivory paper, photocopied from typewritten paste-ups. But the big move came when we acquired a computer and caught up to world of desktop publishing. The Newsletter then evolved into something new and unexpected. Some found the leap from mimeography too startling, even disturbing. We were overstepping our bounds; certainly we were one step ahead of the University’s white, two-color Bulletin, as the most widely read publication on campus. Prof. Alfred Gerteiny, union president at the time, was soon told by Board Chairman Fred Allen that there was no need for a union newsletter–the University, he said, should speak with one voice, meaning, I suppose, the pale, two-color voice of the Bulletin. But of course, we didn’t stop. In fact, Alfred inadvertently opened another door when he learned that I sometimes drew caricatures, and he asked me for one of himself to grace his President’s Message. That was followed by another for Jim Crowley, and then…more union officers. I did one of Senator George McGovern when he was a visiting professor, and had the office next to mine in the History Department one year (how did that happen?). And then…eventually…caricatures of the administration. Of course, these illustrations were never mean-spirited, or intended to provoke anger–only to entertain and illuminate the theme of the text attached to it. They eventually decorated many leaflets on the street, and t-shirts, and raised the morale of picketers during the strike. In fact, I am told that the settlement agreement that finally ended the strike included an administration demand that I not do any more of them. And after that, I never did. The inspiration was gone.