January 20th – [STRIKE UPDATE] The numbers are in: we’re striking this winter, and here’s how!

Dear grads,

1. The numbers are in – and damn, they are strong!

We had 859 responses to the straw poll. This represents nearly half of the graduate student body. Thank you! Graduate students have spoken, and here is what we had to say:

86% support a sick-out strike,
83% support withholding final Winter-quarter grades,
50% support withholding all Winter-quarter grades, and
42% are currently ready to help organize and/or participate in a full teaching strike.

For more detailed results, click here.

Please remember, this poll is not a vote in which the majority determines the course of action – only you can decide how you will strike. The results, however, show us that we have power and safety in numbers. Our numbers are growing, because our movement is strong! Based on your responses, we recommend that all graduate students:

participate in the January 22nd sick-out and
plan to withhold final Winter-quarter grades until the university meets our demand for a COLA.

2. How do I withhold my grades this quarter?

Based on the comments you left in the poll, we wanted to clarify that Canvas stores a history of all grades entered for a course, even if they are later deleted. Last quarter, admin pressured instructors to turn in final grades with the limited data they were able to recover from Canvas. This is an unfair situation for both the students and the instructors who are forced to sacrifice their academic integrity by assigning false grades. This quarter, we want to prevent this situation from happening again, and we believe that the best way is to keep all Winter grades off Canvas and other gradebooks accessible to instructors or administrators. This does not mean withholding grades from undergraduates. The following options keep undergraduates updated on their grading information, pose no risk of incorrect final grades, and protect our instructors from unethical pressure by the administration.

Here are a few options to consider:

Go old school! Print/return physical copies of your students’ assignments with grades written on them. Remind students that they can use Canvas What-If Grades (click here) to calculate their cumulative grades without them even being submitted.
Use a spreadsheet to record and calculate grades. You can use this as a template: click here.
Verbally share grades with students in section and/or office hours.
Use the comments feature on Canvas to give qualitative feedback on written assignments without actually submitting grades. We advise against this option unless the alternatives do not suit your class, as it could result in instructors feeling pressured to create grades based on qualitative feedback.

With so many ways to withhold grades this quarter, how could you resist?
solidarity forever,striking grad students

Mission

We are TAs, GSIs, Tutors, Readers, Student Researchers, Fellows, Postdocs, and Academic Researchers at UCSC. We are represented by our union, UAW 4811 (Formerly UAW 2865 and UAW 5810). In 2019/2020, workers at UCSC withheld labor for a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA), and in 2022, our statewide union struck for 6 weeks over a COLA, arguing for a 54k base wage for all academic workers with the goal of raising the living conditions of academic workers across the state. Now, we are on strike for Divestment, Disclosure, Transitional funding for researchers, & Amnesty for all protestors.