Yale, UCLA share graduate student dilemma
Grade withholding, protests provide link between
universities
By Michael Angell
Imagine calling URSA for grades and hearing that well-known
voice say "Your grade is … walking a picket line."
Yale undergraduates recently went through a similar experience
as graduate students withheld grades for two weeks in a bid for
union recognition. Like their Connecticut counterparts, UCLA’s own
graduate student union is still seeking university recognition,
leaving the possibility open for a similar situation here in the
future.
The Student Association of Graduate Employees (SAGE) has been in
a three-year struggle for recognition from the UCLA administration.
The union staged a walkout for two days last March and still
occasionally protests in front of Murphy Hall.
"Actions like the (Yale) strike are a possibility, but not a
strong possibility," said Joe Nevins, a geography graduate student
and one of the union’s founders. "They have to be discussed by
members. Work stoppages would have more support than a grade
strike."
At Yale, the Graduate Employee Student Organization voted last
Sunday to release grades two weeks after their Jan. 2 due date. In
a secret meeting, union members voted 36-35 to release grades and
end the strike.
Pressure from the Yale administration has generally been
credited with ending the strike. Administrators threatened to take
away the graduate students’ teaching and research posts for the
spring semester if they did not release grades.
Linda Steiner-Lee, a UCLA administrative spokesperson, did not
want to speculate as to how the university might react to a similar
strike.
"Every university has a different situation," Steiner-Lee said.
"We can’t conjecture at this point."
Yale administrators believed that the strike did not have much
support to begin with. According to administration figures, only 83
of 726 teaching assistants participated in the withholding of
grades. But Nevins claimed that such a figure is misleading since
Yale’s graduate organization only represents humanities and social
sciences TAs and the Yale number includes natural sciences TAs.
While the Yale administration tries to highlight division within
the union’s ranks, Nevins pledged that he would stand with his
union in whatever action it decided to take.
"They’ll (the administration) say things like ‘You’re committed
to your duties as a TA’ and then threaten to fire you," Nevins
said. "In the face of such threats, solidarity of the union is
important. I wouldn’t change my vote at all."
However, both Yale and UCLA administrators consider a graduate
student employees’ union unnecessary and detrimental to negotiating
contracts.
The UCLA administration considers graduate student TAs and
researchers as apprentices learning from a professor. They contend
that a union would disrupt the collegial and consultative
relationship between graduate students and professors.
UCLA’s graduate association contends that its members are
employees performing a service for the university. They want the
right to collective bargaining for graduate students who work for
the university. A Public Employee Relations Board hearing at
Griffin Commons is currently in the process of deciding between
these two definitions.
But grades are not as important as union recognition for Ariel
Wyckoff, a fourth-year English major. If a grade strike were to
occur, Wyckoff said "I’d be pissed at the administration. I
wouldn’t blame SAGE."
"For graduate students to go through all the trouble of going to
classes and then teaching classes and grading papers, the
administration should give them recognition," Wyckoff said.