#sugseunion

In one of many meetings with the dean of the graduate school regarding time to completion, he encouraged me to increase my publications by co-authoring journals with my adviser. He seemed to have zero comprehension of how the Humanities and some Social Sciences disciplines evaluate performance and credentials. But then again he also seems to have zero comprehension that graduate students are adults with lives and obligations unrelated to graduate work, which is probably why he told one of my colleagues in another meeting to just get on his parents’ insurance to cut costs. He’s 30 and married. I bet you’re thinking, “Maybe his true area of expertise is funding sources for underrepresented groups.” I hate to disappoint, but this is the same dean who had no idea what the Ford Fellowship was, much less that it is a potential resource for graduate students of color. Even upon learning about it, he expressed confusion as to why such a funding program was necessary.

Grad student workers have unions at many campuses nationwide. Most of these unions are at public universities. How are grads at University of Michigan or Berkeley different from grads at Brown? They aren’t! We are all workers with the right to organize.

Administration says that collective bargaining is “adversarial.” When grad student workers have a collective voice in our workplace conditions, we “transform the collaborative model of graduate education to one of conflict and tension.” How “collaborative” is your current educational model? And how much conflict and tension do you have to absorb without complaint to maintain your peaceful relationship with your advisors? Collective bargaining is only as “adversarial” as admin makes it.