Just a month ago, picket lines surrounded the base of the UC Santa Cruz campus, the halls of buildings filled with chants like “My neck, my back, the UC is whack.”
The graduate student strike calling for a cost of living adjustment (COLA) started in Santa Cruz but quickly sparked solidarity actions at University of California campuses across the state, garnering national attention. It was a wildcat strike, meaning not officially endorsed by the students’ union. Teaching assistants argued they weren’t earning enough to afford California’s pricey rents. The university said they should wait until their union contract expired to negotiate — and sent police armed with riot gear to confront them.
Now, with the coronavirus emptying campuses and rallies impractical due to social distancing, graduate students are figuring out how to take their movement online.
At the end of March, strikers launched Strike University, a series of online classes for activists covering subjects like “Graphic Design for Social Justice” and “Rethinking the Benevolent University.” The teach-ins aim to promote “free and accessible” public education, along with “critical thinking and skills not bound to the imperatives of the market,” the Strike University website reads.
Organizers are also holding epic Zoom calls in which hundreds of strikers across the state discuss strategy and tactics.
Graduate students had tried to gain leverage with the university by refusing to submit students’ grades, but that became harder during a pandemic, said Yulia Gilich, a cinema & digital media Ph.D. student at UC Santa Cruz.
“Because everything is digital now, we cannot physically withhold blue books and everyone has access,” they said. “If the faculty wants to do the extra labor, they can.”
At least 80 graduate students at UC San Diego who were withholding winter quarter grades recently voted to submit them, saying they didn’t want to cause undergraduates additional stress during a pandemic — though other campuses remain on strike.
The union that represents more than 19,000 UC graduate student workers, United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2865, reached agreement on two points with the university in March: Eighty-two graduate students fired from UC Santa Cruz in February for participating in the strike will have their health coverage reinstated.
While the fired students were told in their dismissal letter that they would not be considered for a spring appointment, UC Santa Cruz allowed them to apply if they submitted last quarter’s grades and agreed not to strike again unless the union authorizes it.
“In the context of a global pandemic and mass joblessness, we felt it was crucial to do everything we could to preserve these jobs,” Kavitha Iyengar, the union’s president, said in a statement.
The strikers, however, said that the agreement didn’t go far enough, as it didn’t ensure compensation for those who could no longer find spring appointments.
