Q: Why are graduate students striking?
A: Graduate students are striking because they do not get paid enough to live in Santa Cruz. Many UCSC graduate students are paying over 50% of their wages on rooms in shared houses and do not have enough money left over to pay for food and medical care. Others commute over an hour to work. Others live in their cars. Grad Student living conditions affect their ability to teach and mentor students effectively, degrading the quality of education at UCSC.
For nearly two years, Grad Students have been attempting to address their cost of living through official channels such as union bargaining and the campaign for rent control, but these attempts have been met with apathy and inaction by the university administration.
Q: Why are graduate students striking NOW?
A: UCSC graduate student workers have been campaigning all quarter for a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) to bring their wages out of rent burden, when adjusted for Santa Cruz’s exorbitant rents.
On Sunday, December 8, hundreds of UCSC grad student workers voted to withhold final grades in a wildcat strike action designed to disrupt the everyday functioning of the university. The groundswell of calls to strike came not from a small clique of organizers but from a broad base in every division of the University. This strike is a genuinely rank-and-file led movement and there isn’t much precedent for this type of action at UC–though it is part of a growing wave of strikes amongst educators across the country.
More broadly, we are in a nationwide strike-wave. Harvard graduate students are currently striking. The massive teacher strikes in West Virginia last year was a similarly unsanctioned “wildcat” strike and they won, sparking off strikes by educators in Colorado, Arizona, Chicago and Los Angeles. This is a moment when educators across the country are waking up and demanding an end to more than a generation of underfunding education and underpaying educators.
Q: When will TAs submit grades?
A: TAs are planning to resume grading and upload grades as soon as they receive a COLA. They are asking for faculty to pressure the administration to settle, so as to avoid undue disruption to students.
Q: Will TAs be proctoring exams?
A: Yes; this strike is to withhold grades, but most TAs will still be proctoring exams.
Q: Are Faculty Members withholding grades in sympathy with Grad Students?
A: Grads are not asking faculty to go on strike with them. Lecturers are barred from withholding their labor by a “no strikes” clause in their contract that is in force through the end of January. However, grad students have expressed that their intention in withholding their labor is not that the slack be picked up by faculty. The Santa Cruz Faculty Association, the Union representing ladder faculty, recently sent the following advice:
“Although we are not calling for a sympathy strike, SCFA encourages faculty to express their support for graduate Students’ COLA demand, and to not volunteer to take up the TAs’/Readers’ work in their absence. If you do not have a TA/Reader assigned to your course, you should continue your full range of traditional work, including assigning and submitting grades. If a TA/Reader normally assigns and/or submits grades, you are not required to prepare or submit grades on their behalf during the strike. We have attorneys on our side to ensure that faculty who decline to volunteer to take up struck work are protected to the maximum extent that the law provides”
This advice, while sent by the SCFA, also applies to Unit 18 (lecturers) represented by UC-AFT, which has its own legal support mechanism for lecturers. Lecturers have the additional protection that the MOU with the University prohibits the assignment of additional work without augmenting your compensation accordingly. The Union is prepared to defend workload protections energetically.
Be in contact with your department this week and document interactions with Admin. If you feel that there is an expectation–either stated or implied–that you pick up work normally assigned to graduate students, get in contact with your union representative. For Lecturers, your representative is Jeb Purucker (jpurucker@ucaft.org) and for Senate Faculty, your representative is Debbie Gould (dbg8664@gmail.com)
Q: Am I obligated to turn in grades if my TAs withhold their labor?
A: Instructors of record are ultimately the ones responsible for submitting grade rosters at the end of the term. This means that under normal circumstances, the University holds Instructors of Record, not TAs, responsible for grading. However, these are not normal circumstances.
In a situation where large numbers of TAs are withholding their labor, it is unreasonable for the University to expect faculty to grade hundreds of papers at the last minute. Lecturers have contractual workload protections to ensure that any work in excess of normal duties for a course is compensated. It is never permissible for the University to assign uncompensated work to lecturers. See the question above in this FAQ for the statement by the SCFA for Ladder Faculty.
Similarly, it is unreasonable for the university to expect faculty to compromise the quality of the instruction that they deliver by relaxing grading standards or eliminating graded assignments. Both lecturers and senate faculty are protected by Academic Freedom and Academic Responsibility clauses in their contracts, and by the University’s own policies on academic freedom. Academic responsibility means that the university expects us to deliver quality education and effective instruction in line with course objectives; academic freedom gives us the broad ability to determine how to do this. It is a violation of both of these principles for the administration to unilaterally step in and mandate that we diminish the quality of instruction we deliver because Admin is unable to settle a labor dispute with another academic unit.
Finally, it is not only unreasonable but patently absurd for the University to expect faculty to turn in grades in a situation in which grade records from earlier in the quarter are being withheld by striking TAs. Lecturers have UC-AFT, and Senate Faculty have both the Santa Cruz Faculty Association (SCFA) and the Academic Senate to defend instructors from unreasonable expectations imposed on them by Administration.
The best advice we have in this situation is to be in frequent and clear communication with your department this week about the obstacles you are facing in doing your job. If you don’t have the resources you need to fulfill your responsibilities, let your department know. Document any communication with administration, and cc your union representative. For Lecturers, your representative is Jeb Purucker (jpurucker@ucaft.org) and for Senate Faculty, your representative is Debbie Gould (dbg8664@gmail.com)
Q: Can I just give my students incompletes?
A: Incompletes are not recommended as they may lead to bureaucratic hassles down the road for students, and we don’t know how long it will take to settle this issue. Moreover, removing incompletes will cost students $10 per grade.
Q: Why have grades for my course been deleted in Canvas?
A: First, no grades have been permanently deleted. Graduate Students are concerned that the University may, in an attempt to divide academic workers from one another, try to make the burden of grading fall on instructors of record who supervise TAs. Faculty may face immense pressure to either 1) do excessive amounts of grading themselves without compensation, or to 2) reduce the quality of education they deliver, by relaxing grading standards and eliminating graded assignments. The Graduate Students’ reasoning is that it is unfair of the UC Administration to force this choice on instructors of record by making them either cross a picket lines as “scabs”, or face potential retaliation for a principled refusal to do so. Accordingly, they argue that that the best way to protect instructors is to withhold all grades, including ones from earlier in the quarter. If the university does the right thing and agrees to pay them enough to do their jobs, all grades will be turned in along with final grades. Ultimately, however, this is a choice that the University has to make. In the meantime, the Grad Students believe that the best protection instructors will have is the ability to earnestly say to Administration: “I literally cannot submit grades for my class because my TAs haven’t given me grades for any assignments”
Q: Won’t this hurt students?
A: As educators, our commitment is always to fight for our students and for stronger support for undergraduate education. Graduate Students recognize that the belated grade reporting that may result from TAs withholding grades can be a short-term burden for students. In the mid- to long-term, however, students are much better served when the professional workers handling their education at UC can focus on their work rather than on houselessness, food insecurity and transportation precarity.
We have advised striking graduate students to submit grades for students who feel they are in a situation that requires the urgent release of their grade, no questions asked. The Office of the Registrar has indicated that they intend to allow the submission of individual grades on a case-by-base basis. Please see the question below for more information.
Beyond this, how deeply this impacts students will be the result of choices made by administration regarding what to do for students for whom no grade is available. The administration does not have to let the burden of this pay dispute fall on undergraduate students; and if it does, that is the result of a choice made by administrators.
In an email dated December 9th, UC Administration assured undergraduates that “We are committed to ensuring that this grade strike does not impede your academic progress at UC Santa Cruz. We want to make sure you are able to focus on studying and taking your finals.”
Q: What if I have students who are in precarious situations, on academic probation, trying to graduate etc?
A: The Graduate Students have put together a FAQ on their website that addresses many of the concerns that students on academic probation and students with precarious financial aid situations may have, as well as how the strike will affect graduation and transcripts.
We have advised striking graduate students to submit grades for students who feel they are in a situation that requires the urgent release of their grade, no questions asked.
Q: How do I submit grades for individual students who need their grades submitted urgently?
A: The Registrar’s Office has sent out a form to departments asking departments which classes they expect to be affected by the strike. The form includes the following text: “On a case by case basis, the Office of the Registrar is able to manually change an individual grade roster to support a partial posting of official grades (remaining grades may be entered later).”
Update: The Registrar’s Office has now sent instructions to instructors of record on how to submit individual grades. Instructors should save the grades they wish to submit in the grade roster, then email the Registrar’s Office from their UCSC email address with their request to submit a partial grade roster. Requests should include the course subject and number and be sent to registrar@ucsc.edu, CC regsys@ucsc.edu and cpsanger@ucsc.edu.
Q: Is this strike illegal?
A: The graduate students have a “no strikes” clause in their contract and this strike is in violation of that, making it a “wildcat” strike. This makes it much less predictable than the strikes that we are used to at UCSC that are limited in duration and confined within the limits of labor law. This unpredictability also makes it potentially much more powerful. The successful strikes last year in West Virginia were wildcat strikes and resulted in major gains for organized labor and for teachers across the state. Finally, to put this in context, it is very likely that most of the strikes that you have heard of in labor history have been illegal strikes.
Q: What do I tell my students?
A: Be straightforward with your students about the uncertainty of this situation. Tell them that the cleanest way for this all to resolve is for the Administration to grant the demands of the graduate students and that student and faculty support is key in that. You can direct them to the Undergraduate FAQ on the website for further questions. Let students know that if they believe they are in a situation that necessitates the immediate release of their grades, they should contact you and/or their TA to have their grades submitted, no questions asked. You can also encourage them to discuss this with their TAs, who will have answers to many common questions.
Q: How Can I Support Grad Student Demands?
A: Many ways!
- Make the case to your colleagues; ask them, will you be supporting your graduate students in the strike?
- Make your support for the strike very clear to your TAs and to the undergraduates.
- Sign this circulating petition and share with your colleagues.