Dear UCSC Community,
Earlier today, the Office of the Registrar sent an email to instructors telling them to submit any missing grades. This email warned of consequences to undergraduate students, including potential disqualification, being unable to enroll in classes that require a prerequisite taken this quarter, and delays in financial aid and graduation. This letter is inaccurate: at best, it is a boilerplate letter that was not changed to reflect the measures in place due to the grading strike, or at worst, it is a deliberate attempt to spread misinformation. We sincerely hope that the former is the case, but regardless, we want to dispel the myths contained therein.
Graduate students, faculty and staff across UCSC have taken measures to mitigate the potential negative impacts of the strike to undergraduates. These measures include:
1) No students will be disqualified or barred from enrolling next quarter as a result of missing grades. Graduate student strikers received the following message from college provosts: “After much consideration, the Council of Provosts, which oversees Academic Standing Review, has decided to waive academic review for Fall 2019. This means that students will not be reviewed or subject to barment this quarter and thus, we do not need TAs to inform us of student grades.”
2) No students will be dropped from or barred from enrolling in courses that require a prerequisite taken in Fall 2019. According to the FAQ published by UCSC Public Affairs, “Students with missing grades will not be dropped from future courses that require completion of the course as a prerequisite. Satisfaction of prerequisite courses is not verified until after a final grade has been assigned.”
3) For students in extenuating circumstances (e.g. financial aid probation, graduating and urgently need their graduation processed), striking graduate students have offered to submit individual grades at the students’ request. Students do not need to disclose their reason for needing their grades urgently in order to have their grades submitted – we have advised striking grads to submit grades for any student who says they need their grade urgently, no questions asked. The Office of the Registrar has made a process available for submitting partial grade rosters, so these students will have their grades officially processed, and will not suffer any consequences as a result of the strike. This process is outlined in an email sent out to instructors by the Registrar and also on the COLA campaign website (https://payusmoreucsc.com/).
For more information about how undergraduate students may be affected and the measures in place to protect them, please see the FAQ pages for grad students (https://payusmoreucsc.com/f-a-q/), faculty (https://payusmoreucsc.com/359-2/) and undergrads (https://payusmoreucsc.com/f-a-q-for-undergrads/) on the COLA campaign website.
Instructors: please continue to support the graduate students’ fight for a COLA and do not submit your grades, except for those special case students who requested that their grades be released. If you are being pressured by the administration to enter grades that would normally be entered by TAs or readers in order circumvent the strike, it is important to know that the university cannot force you to do this additional work. For more information, please see the statements of support issued by the Santa Cruz Faculty Association (https://payusmoreucsc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/SCFA-Solidarity-Statement-12_11_19-1.pdf) and the Faculty Organizing Group (https://payusmoreucsc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Faculty-Organizing-Group-Statement-of-Solidarity.pdf).
We care deeply about our undergraduate students and have gone to great lengths to minimize any potential harmful short-term impacts of the strike on them. In the long term, a COLA will improve the quality of education on this campus, as graduate students will have the time and resources to do our best for our students, instead of being over-burdened by poverty, stress, and the external jobs that we need to take on to make ends meet. Our working conditions are their learning conditions. We are seeking to improve them for all of us.
In solidarity,
Roxy Davis, M.A.Graduate Student, Department of Psychology
UC Santa Cruz