Wednesday, November 20, 1996Strike means hope for students
I have wanted to teach since I was in the third grade. As a TA
at UCLA, I have the privilege to get paid for two things I like to
do: teach history and study history. I also have the right to join
a union in my workplace.
Before I joined last year, SAGE satisfied the state’s technical
requirements for unionization, but the administration denied us
recognition until the matter had been decided in court. Last
summer, we won the resulting Public Employee Relations Board case,
and the administration has since filed an appeal. So much for the
court decision.
One of my objectives in joining SAGE is to protect my career,
and other promising scholars’ careers, against education cutbacks
and short-sighted restructuring programs. These developments
threaten the quality of undergraduate education by increasing class
size, reducing individual attention for students, and exacerbating
the financial burden of attending graduate school. Let’s face it:
we work hard at what we like to do, but increases in fees combined
with decreases in the number and amount of fee waivers and stipends
take a toll on the quality of our work. Most of the TAs I know have
a second job to help them meet their financial obligations. The
union stands a better chance of protecting our education through
collective bargaining than we as Academic Student Employees do
individually.
Because of a threatening letter from Chancellor Young, I am not
at liberty to reveal my actions during the strike. It’s odd that
Young wants to dock strikers’ pay for missed time when we never get
paid for the extra work we do. Suffice it to say that I have made
my decision with my students’ long term and immediate interests at
heart.
SAGE is fighting not only for recognition and collective
bargaining on working conditions, but also to improve and expand
educational opportunities for undergraduates. Teaching Assistant,
tutor and reader working conditions are undergraduate learning
conditions.
Stephen M. Shea
Graduate student
History
College rankings’ story incomplete
A couple of key facts were missing in your article on the U.S.
News and World Report ranking of colleges ("U.S. News faces heat
for ranking colleges" Nov. 13), and I can’t help wondering if the
article was one-sided as a result of bad judgment or if the writer
is also against college rankings. If this is a paper to be read by
Bruins and alumni, give the information we want to know. Namely,
shouldn’t it be said WHY we fell in this year’s rankings? I was
sick to see not only how low we are in the current list, but also
how close we are in it to that nearby, unworthy $chool. But the
feeling I got from the article was "don’t trust the magazine, and,
by the way, we fell out of the top 30 this year."
Nationwide, the magazine is and should be used as a starting
point for students like myself who had no idea where to apply for
our undergraduate degree. I agree with Elfin’s statement that this
ranking is one of only many criteria that should be used. But who
has enough time and money to spend at each campus they are
considering, especially if the student lives thousands of miles
away? It is therefore an excellent source of reference for aspiring
college students to make a rough list of what colleges are best for
their interests, money and hard work. Then they can read up on and
visit a mere handful of schools.
Furthermore, UCLA should be THANKFUL that there are too many
colleges to get extremely detailed in the scoring about each one.
Look in the magazine, and read the fine print about the great deal
of information that went into each score of each university. Then
ask yourself, is it too bad that other aspects don’t come into
play, like the school’s new expense hikes, general bureaucracy,
strikes resulting from underpaid graduate students when professors
should be teaching anyway, lack of parking, URSA, crappy classrooms
unless you’re a business student at Anderson, crime rate and
subsequent lack of security, etc. …? (I could go on, but this is
why we fell, or it at least should be responsible for our ranking
… and I also predict our rank will fall even lower next
year).
Tom Schwartz
Junior
Japanese