Dear all,
TL;DR: ACTION ITEM: ORGANIZE A MEETING WITH YOUR DEPARTMENT CONCERNING DEPARTMENT PLEDGES.
Linked here are all 22 pledges signed by departments in solidarity with fired graduate student workers, and a letter from STEM graduates at UCSC.
You have probably heard by now that on Friday the administration announced the firing of 54 graduates, before sending out 44 notices of intent to dismiss grads from spring appointments. In addition to this, an undisclosed number of graduates received notice that their spring appointments will be blocked, bringing the number of fired grads well beyond 54, and possibly as high as 80.
At least 16 pledges are now active and no fewer than 411 graduate student workers are committed to declining appointments next quarter, in one form or another, until fired grads are reinstated. This total includes at least 176 “hard pledges” to refuse any spring quarter appointment in the event of mass firing.
This moment demands the most meaningful form of solidarity. Fired graduate students have conviction in the knowledge that we are not alone on this campus.
This is also a critical juncture for the future of public higher education. It is a decisive moment in the broader fight for a system of public education that adequately funds graduate research and education—one that supports diverse and international scholarship, and that is run by and for researchers and educators.
We call upon departments to meet immediately to review their pledges and start to organize their fulfillment, and possibly expanding them in light of yesterday’s firings.
On Monday we will send out a form to assess the needs and positions of those who refuse TA/GSIships.
A list of pledges:
All pledges:
Anthropology, Astronomy, BME, Chemistry, Computational Media, CSE, Earth & Planetary Sciences, Education, EEB, ENVS, FDM, Fem Studies, HAVC, Histcon, History, Literature, MCD Biology, METX, Music, Politics, Psychology, Sociology.
Active pledges:
Anthropology, Astronomy, Chemistry, Computational Media, CSE, Earth & Planetary Sciences, FDM, Fem Studies, HAVC, Histcon, History, Literature, Music, Politics, Psychology, Sociology.
Possibly active (depending on the termination of a member of their department):
BME, ENVS.
“Hard” Pledges:*
Anthropology, Computational Media, Feminist Studies, History of Consciousness, Literature, Psychology, Sociology
*Computational Media and Psychology’s pledges stated that they would refuse TAships, GSIships and readerships only in their departments (besides not taking up fired labor). Literature had stated they would also refuse GSRships; at the request of the collective, literature’s pledging grads retracted this and informed grads and the department of this today. The other hard pledges commit to declining all spring appointments other than GSRs.