General
Hub for Contacting Admins and Public Officials
A list of UC administrators and public officials to call, email, and write letters to about COLA. Includes talking points, scripts, and sample messages.
Chants
A collection of chants for the picket line!
Rent Burden Calculator
Calculate your rent burden!
Resources for Faculty
A collection of resources prepared by the Faculty Organizing Group (FOG) for other faculty. Includes language and advice for faculty responses to employment warning letters and student conduct hearings, strike activity statements/letters, and statements/petitions from FOG and others.
Two Easy Ways to Raise Awareness of Rent Burden
Instructions for how to add information about your rent burden and the need for COLA to your email signature and directory listing.
How to Spam the Snitch Form
On February 7, Public Affairs sent a mass email asking undergraduates to report classes and sections that have been cancelled or modified as a result of the teaching strike, and the names of striking TAs. This page contains instructions for students to fuzz the form data and an email template to share with other students.
FAQ
Currently slightly out-of-date set of questions and answers for UCSC grad students, international grads, undergrads, and faculty. Written December 24, 2019, mostly covering the grading strike.
Resource Centers for Students
A list of resource centers for students on campus, including links, locations, and hours of operation.
Learning about the Issues
COLA Whitepaper
A whitepaper that summarizes the local economic context for our demands, a simple analysis for the cost of implementing a COLA, highlighting the variability in compensation between different graduate programs and disciplines. Includes an accompanying web app in which the source data for the whitepaper is available to explore interactively.
Grad Life Before COLA
A series of 10 anonymous, first-hand graduate student accounts of trying to survive Santa Cruz on inadequate wages and funding. These are not uncommon experiences.
History of Attempts to Engage the Admin
For years, we’ve been trying to make our needs known to the administration through official communication channels. We strike because all other options have been exhausted.
No Place Like Home
A wide-spanning research project on the Santa Cruz housing crisis launched in 2015. Their website has a number of informative resources, including:
- An interactive visualization of their renter survey responses
- Identification of four key issues around the housing crisis as experienced by renters: rent burden, overcrowding, forced moves/evictions, and experiences with “major problems” (as defined by housing studies and scholarship on evictions)
- Video stories and interviews with community members
- A historical analysis of the causes of the crisis, including changing demand, inadequate supply, lack of tenant protections or support despite overheated market conditions, and political roadblocks
- Discussion of broad solution strategies
Teaching Strike
How to Strike
How to participate in the full teaching strike. From February 4, 2020.
Strike Teach-in Slides
Slides and a script for TAs and instructors to use to teach about the strike to their sections and lectures in the week leading up to the full strike. Use this teach-in to open up a discussion about what students want and need from their TAs and instructors during the coming weeks.
Grading Strike
How to Strike
How to participate in the grading strike. From December 9, 2019.
Telling Your Students About the Strike
How to talk to your students about the strike. Includes an email template for graduate TAs and GSIs to send to their undergraduate students informing them of the grading strike.
Telling Your Faculty About the Strike
How to talk to your faculty about the strike. Includes an email template for graduate students to send to their faculty informing them of the grading strike, and a document about asking them to organize.
Grade Request Flowchart and Response to Grade Requests
An email and grade request flowchart to send to students who are concerned about getting their final grade for a class withheld, to inform them about different circumstances and their varying impacts on students.
FERPA Waiver Form
Federal and UCSC FERPA (Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act) does not require UCSC TAs and GSIs to receive prior written consent from students in order to share their grades with them outside of things like Canvas. But as an extra precaution, here is a written consent form that may be used by students and TAs/GSIs to authorize the release of grade information between the TA/GSI and student.
Message for Undergrads to Send to Faculty
A message for undergraduate students to send to their instructors to voice their support of COLA and striking students as they begin their grading strike. From December 14, 2019.
Message to Parents of Undergrads
A message to parents of undergraduates as TAs continue their grading strike. From December 17, 2019.