Strike Updates, Tuesday, Feb 18, 2020
For the sixth day, hundreds of graduate students, undergraduates, faculty, staff, lecturers, and others rallied at both entrances to campus. For the sixth day, all metro bus service to campus was disrupted by the picket line. In the afternoon, a huge group of STEM graduate students wearing lab coats once again marched to join the picket line, and joined strikers in peacefully shutting down the main entrance to campus, for the sixth consecutive working day. As of today, UCSC has spent approximately $1.8 million on the police presence at the picket line. By the end of this week, the figure will be approximately $2.7 million. Administration has so far offered nothing substantive–not even non-retaliation for those who they are asking to capitulate–and so tomorrow the strike continues!
In response to the cartoonish threats of administration and UCOP to fire hundreds of graduate students for participating in the strike, COLA strikes and actions are planned at every UC campus for this week. Tomorrow UCLA graduates are staging a sickout strike, and UCSB is considering going on a full strike to demand their own COLA. Meanwhile, UCSC undergraduate student government announced that they are introducing resolutions to investigate the offices of UCOP and UCSC administration, and to explore recalling EVC Kletzer for endangering students and negligence in the handling of this crisis.
Tomorrow the UCSC faculty senate will meet to vote on two resolutions, one condemning the threats of the university to fire its graduate students and the infringement on faculty rights and academic freedom, and a second calling for higher wages and departmental autonomy in hiring and advocating for a meaningful resolution to the strike.
To be very clear: The university’s current position is that they would rather destroy entire departments, including almost all of the social sciences and humanities at UCSC, and fire hundreds of graduate students than to have a single substantive meeting to discuss a solution to the cost of living crisis. This would willfully lead to graduate student homelessness, lack of access to medical care, and deportation for graduate students who already barely get by. That position is hopelessly reckless and must be abandoned.
Alternatively, strikers once again invite the administration to the table to have a substantive conversation about the material conditions in which we live and to bring the strike to a peaceful end.
Of note: More than a few strikers are ready to begin pushing for a university in which administrators are made irrelevant, and in which workers–faculty, students, and staff–govern the university collectively. One supporter asked: How much longer until we abolish the UC Regents and truly return this university to its core missions of teaching and research by placing it in the hands of its teachers, students, and scholars.
Some of today’s action items:
- Join strikers on the picket line, beginning tomorrow at 7:30am. Please bring friends! You can also bring supplies: sunscreen, hand sanitizer, healthy food, and large containers of drinking water are always in demand.
- FACULTY: Please attend tomorrow’s faculty senate meeting and vote in favor of the resolutions condemning administration’s threats and in support of the COLA campaign.
- Cancel your classes and sections, and do not ask your students to cross the picket line.
- Lecturers should consider holding their classes at the picket.
- Push back the dates of large assignments, or as some instructors have done, cancel them.
- Write to the administration about how you feel about Lori Kletzer and Cynthia Larive threatening to fire hundreds of graduate students for demanding to be able to afford to live where they work.
- If you were a faculty member or student who witnessed or recorded video or photographs of police violence please write a description of what you saw and send footage to: mas1218@gmail.com.
- Share media coverage of the strike.
As always, thank you so so much for your support, and extra special thanks to our undergraduates and to the faculty who have been coming out to support strikers–we are so grateful. See you tomorrow!