Universal COVID-19 Time to Degree Extension for All Graduate Students

Dear UCSC grads,

While our individual experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic vary, we are all affected by it. To this end, we ask that UCSC administration grants a universal one-year time to degree extension to all graduate students, regardless of their discipline, year in program, personal circumstance, and nationality.

More specifically, we request that UCSC administration:

Makes available a fully-funded one year normative time to degree increase for all graduate students
Extends the non-residential supplemental tuition (NRST) waiver by one year
Waives the 18-quarter teaching limit

UC Santa Barbara, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego have granted a one-year, one-semester and one-quarter extension respectively to all doctoral students across the board, demonstrating that inclusive, all-encompassing solutions are not only possible, but that they can also be implemented at a campus level in record time.

Please add your name to this petition to urge UCSC administration to support its graduate students by granting us a universal fully-funded time to degree extension.

Mission

We are TAs, GSIs, Tutors, Readers, Student Researchers, Fellows, Postdocs, and Academic Researchers at UCSC. We are represented by our union, UAW 4811 (Formerly UAW 2865 and UAW 5810). In 2019/2020, workers at UCSC withheld labor for a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA), and in 2022, our statewide union struck for 6 weeks over a COLA, arguing for a 54k base wage for all academic workers with the goal of raising the living conditions of academic workers across the state. Now, we are on strike for Divestment, Disclosure, Transitional funding for researchers, & Amnesty for all protestors.