I have been put at a loss by our Delegate Assembly’s recent vote to replace the honored word “teacher” with the word “member” “whenever possible.”

The argument put forward is that the UFT includes more than teachers among its members; it includes family child care providers, nurses, paras, secretaries, guidance counselors, psychologists, speech therapists and many more. True enough.

So what will we get when we replace “teachers” with “members”? First, we lose the identifiable element in the words United Federation of Teachers, and in the place of an identity, we get the joke: the United Federation of Members: a Union of Members. Clearly, this does level the playing field, but it does so by stripping us of any identity whatsoever.

John M. Giannone, retired