In her January 27th email, Chancellor Larive inappropriately threatened to use the Student Code of Conduct against striking workers. I am forwarding an amazing response from undergraduate organizer Kelsey Gage.
Graduate students are now being summoned for disciplinary hearings. Many international graduate students fear losing their student status and being deported. These charges are bogus and we WILL fight them.
Admin claims that striking grads are hurting undergraduate students. Undergrads, you can support us by signing and circulating this undergrad solidarity petition. Let admin know that you have not been harmed by the grading strike and that you support striking workers! Grad students, please share with your sections from this quarter and last.
Solidarity forever,
Striking grads
Chancellor Larvine,
You may not remember me, but we met this Saturday while I was working the check-in tables for the Vandana Shiva event. You insisted on introducing yourself and inquiring about my major, though you did not ask my name. My name is Kelsey Gage, I am a second year undergraduate student, and I dedicate my time to working for Basic Needs on this campus and to activism.
I wanted to respond to you directly to express my deep disappointment that you failed so completely to absorb Dr. Shiva’s wisdom, and chose to send this, frankly offensive, message to the members of the university. Didn’t you hear her when she spoke about Oneness v.s. the 1%? About how making money becomes an addiction for people in power, who don’t know when to stop? She was talking about you. She was talking about your choice to shamelessly accept a six-figure salary (plus monthly money for housing!) while the grad students who make this university worthwhile, whom you should be honoring, respecting, and most of all paying, are sick, starving, and struggling just to go on. It is graduate students who deserve that money, not you, despite what you have said twice now to the contrary. Can your addiction to amassing wealth at the cost of others truly be so great that you were unmoved by the testimonies of chronically ill, traumatized, depressed, crushed graduate students you received, or did you choose to ignore their humanity and disregard their pain by not even reading them?
Didn’t you hear Dr. Shiva declare that all beings have rights? Graduate students and all members of this university should be guaranteed the right to safe and affordable housing, to healthy and ample food, clean water, affordable health care, working conditions that do not threaten their metal or physical health, and a living wage. Your insidious behavior and language has suggested otherwise throughout this strike and before it, and you should be ashamed.
Didn’t you hear Dr. Shiva declare that “we will not be divided through hate”? You continue to try and pit undergraduate and graduate students against one another, and it is as disgusting as it is futile. You have offensive emails full of enough deception and deceit to make you sound like a bad politician (and I’ve met a few), while we have a powerful interlocking community built from the ground up, which practices mutual care and solidarity. We have genuine connection and on top of that we have a powerful network of social media. We are well informed about the true nature of this strike– and the true enemy in this fight. Your misdirection, your distortions of the truth and your downright lies are just a waste of keystrokes. It is not graduate students who are hurting undergrads. It is you, underpaying and overworking the very people who make our education (the education we overpay for, and go into debt for) possible.
Unlike you, the graduate students have been very, very clear. This strike doesn’t end until you give each and every graduate student a Cost of Living Adjustment of $1,412 per month. Allow me to just as clear: undergraduate students stand with graduate students today, tomorrow and forever. We don’t want our grades until they have their COLA, and it makes me sick that you would try to stand between us and our beloved grads.
COLA Now. COLA 4 All.
Kelsey Gage
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FSWG Land-Based
Co-ChairSunrise Mvmt Santa Cruz Logistics Team Lead
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