Delegate #3:
Laura Bray
University of Oklahoma
My name is Laura Bray, I’m a sociologist and Research Scientist at the University of Oklahoma’s Center for Applied Social Research. I’m also a member and treasurer of the OU Chapter of the AAUP. I got my start as a rank-and-file member of UE150, the Graduate Workers Union at NC State and am currently involved with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), an organization that supports non-unionized workers interested in organizing their workplace.
I’m running for Convention Delegate as part of the United Faculty for the Common Good slate. I’m running because things are not going well in higher education, and they haven’t been for a long time.
Tuition costs have skyrocketed, leaving multiple generations of students now with crippling levels of debt.
More and more academic positions have become low paying and precarious.
And outside political forces have increasingly succeeded in implementing their vision, where higher education exists solely to transfer marketable job skills, making good workers rather than laying the foundation for a good life.
As we lay out in our statement of principles, the business-as-usual approach will not cut it. It’s not enough that we have the morally superior argument and correct analysis if we don’t have the power to actually enact our vision.
We must be willing to put in the hard work of both building and exercising power.
Building power means more active and aggressive organizing across all levels of the university and building coalitions with allied student and community groups.
Exercising power means taking bold and imaginative actions that show we believe in our vision enough to take risks.
Academic workers in the South and other areas hostile to organized labor must be part of this, which is where I see this local as playing an important role. If we’re going to create a strong labor movement for higher education, we need to get more creative and ambitious about organizing in the non-unionized workplaces where our advocacy chapters are located.
I’m running to be a part of this fight for transformative change and create a Higher Education that serves the Common Good.
Biographical Information
I am a sociologist and research scientist at the University of Oklahoma’s (OU) Center for Applied Social Research, where I’ve worked since receiving my PhD from North Carolina State University in 2021. I’ve been active in higher ed labor organizing for the past four years, beginning as a rank-and-file member of UE150, the NC State Graduate Workers Union. As graduate workers, we organized alongside other campus workers for greater workplace safety as part of the statewide Safe Jobs Save Lives campaign during the COVID-19 pandemic. I also helped lead the Another UNC is Possible campaign, a partnership between UE150 and AAUP chapters in the UNC System advocating for a justice centered pandemic response and reversal of the state’s disinvestment in higher education.
Shortly after joining OU AAUP in 2021, I became treasurer and member of the executive committee. Our primary focus in recent years has been fighting legislative attacks on academic freedom and democratic governance, including Oklahoma’s classroom censorship and anti-CRT law (HB1775) and the recent executive order restricting campus DEI activities (EO 2023-31). Beyond the university, I volunteer with the Labor Network for Sustainability as a researcher on their Younger Worker Listening Project, focused on supporting young workers organizing at the intersection of labor and climate. I also recently became a volunteer organizer with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), a national organization that provides training and support for nonunionized workers organizing their workplace. With other grassroots organizers and rank-and-file union members, I’m in the process of forming a local EWOC to build a stronger labor movement in Oklahoma.