Here is one faculty member’s response to Monday’s activities, and the intimidating email from Public Affairs (“Unsanctioned strike by some graduate students”, 2/7). We thank this faculty member and hope this inspires others to show similar examples of solidarity.
I am canceling next week’s classes. Please report me for doing so.
Dear all,
Some at this university, it seems, would like to see its students function as amateur police. In a last-ditch effort to frighten faculty and graduate students away from demonstrating support for a living-wage campaign, a message went out across campus this afternoon that includes a form that allows you to report that a class, section, or office hours has been canceled, moved, or repurposed.
Simply put, I believe that you deserve better than an education that comes at the direct expense of those who teach courses and sections, hold office hours, grade papers, mentor and advise you, conduct valuable research, and do much more to make this campus fulfill its claim to be an institution of public higher education. Having attended and received my Ph.D. from UCSC, I went into well over $100,000 in debt while doing so.
I have much respect for those who, upon finding the cost of living unbearable, have chosen at considerable risk to fight for a cost of living adjustment. They are doing so, it seems, for themselves, for each other, and for those who will attend this and other universities in the future. The university is striking back hard now because they sense the potential for this campaign to spread, because the conditions that make it necessary are already widespread enough as to pose a meaningful threat to the future of higher education in general.
For that reason, I am canceling classes next week, and I would like to invite you to report me for doing so. On my decision—not your TAs’—sections are canceled as well. By canceling class, I am choosing to do something that I believe is my responsibility as a faculty member: to fight for the long-term viability and integrity of higher education. Without a cost of living adjustment, I simply do not believe it to be possible that UCSC can continue to provide education with integrity. When our undergraduate and graduate students regularly face eviction, heavy rent burden, and food insecurity, it radically impacts our ability to serve a diverse student population. Conditions in which students struggle so much to live are not conditions in which education can flourish.
So if you like, report me now. Report me throughout the weekend, and throughout the week to come. Report me multiple times, if you please. The form, I should note, is not anonymous: it records your e-mail address. I am proud to be reported, and invite you to do so for any reason at all—frustration, annoyance, apathy, and/or solidarity with the cancelation of class.
Whatever consequences may ensue, I welcome. I am proud to bear some of the risk with our striking graduate students.