UC strike leaving students in lurch
Canceled classes, lack of instructors having big impact
Worry reigns across University of California campuses — but not just among the researchers, graduate student instructors and postdocs whose weekold strike is hitting UC like a gut punch just before final exams.
It’s the students who are nervous.
“I’m just plain worried,” said Tamera Martin, 19, a UC Berkeley sophomore majoring in Ancient Roman and Greek studies whose words echo the feelings of students up and down the state. “I don’t want it to look bad on our record as students because of the lack of work being done.”
She’s talking about thousands of canceled classes, the loss of student instructors who grade exams and projects, and the shift of many classes online
so that sympathetic professors don’t have to cross the picket lines. Undergraduates, who were excited when 48,000 academic employees walked off the job on Nov. 14 to demand higher pay and better working conditions, now say they feel the quality of their education is up in the air.
Among the strikers are 19,000 graduate-student instructors — GSIs — who provide the backbone of UC education. Besides grading, they lecture, teach labs and host the allimportant small-group discussions that help untangle the complicated subjects that undergrads signed up for at the world’s top public research university system.
Yet most students feel a deep sympathy for their striking instructors.
“It’s not fair that people aren’t paid a living wage, especially since I feel the GSIs do more work than the professors,” Martin said. “But we students pay to go to this school. And now we’re paying to not go to class.”
Anyone who enters Dwinelle Hall at UC Berkeley immediately gets the point: “Annoyed by cancellation?” reads a large sign. It features the email addresses of three undergraduate deans that students can complain to.
The conundrum of supporting both the strikers and their own education is enough to confound a philosophy major like Julianna Rubio, 21.
“It is a philosophical question,” Rubio, a junior, said as she studied outside of South Hall the other day. Turning for help to the ethical theory of consequentialism, she noted: “You want the best possible outcome for everyone.”
But that can be tough when finals are coming up. “It is a little troublesome knowing that I don’t have the academic support from my GSIs,” said Rubio, whose classes typically have 70 to 100 students. By contrast, the discussion groups led by her GSIs have only 15 people, and Rubio feels more comfortable getting her questions answered in that setting.
“Not having the opportunity to do that is the biggest struggle” ahead of finals, she said. “I wish UC would just match the needs of what (the strikers) are asking for. The GSIs work really hard, and they deserve more than what they’re being paid.”
Graduate student instructors generally work half time, about 20 hours a week, and devote the rest of the week to their own studies. But the striking student workers say it’s nearly impossible to live on their $24,000 salary, even though some departments kick in another $6,000 to $10,000. Many say that most of their income goes for rent, leaving little for food and other necessities.
“Hey, UC! Don’t be crass! Power to the working class!” strikers chanted on the picket line the other day, as students wandered past empty buildings on their way to study or attend a professor-taught class remotely.
Rishabh Dave, 18, a freshman putting the final touches on a physics assignment as he sat on a bench outside Dwinelle Hall, said he doesn’t believe the strike will last until finals in mid-December.
“I’m sure the university is aware of how much of a disaster that would be,” Dave said. Then he paused and said, “This is wishful thinking, to be honest.”
On Monday, it did not appear as if the sides were any closer to resolution. The United Auto Workers, which represents the four groups of striking student employees and researchers, enlisted the help of 18 members of Congress, led by Rep. Katie Porter, D-Irvine, to urge UC President Michael Drake to bargain “in good faith.”
UC officials have said they are bargaining fairly and proposing wage hikes that would make UC workers competitive with their counterparts at top private universities.
Meanwhile, on campus, Dave said his math professor recently lamented the idea of having to grade 400 papers and joked about letting students grade each other’s exams.
“He initially floated it as a joke,” Dave said. “But it’s seeming to be the most realistic option.”
While students remain sympathetic to the strikers, he said, “It’s been a bad experience for most undergraduates.” Especially for first-year students who are just getting used to being away at college.
“Speaking personally, it’s been increasingly difficult to have the motivation to work on your assignments when there’s no one to answer questions. No one who’s actually going to see if you turn in an assignment. No one who cares if you actually go to class — and a decent portion of people aren’t going,” he said.
Across campus in Faculty Glade, a couple of students practiced yoga on pink mats beneath a 140year-old California buckeye tree.
“I feel like I’m trying to be supportive of the cause, but it’s a little hard,” said Melissa Mendieta, 19, a mechanical engineering major who will need to take Physics 7B next semester. Because of that, she needs to do well this semester in Physics 7A.
But that’s already a problem because her professors have stopped teaching new material and are reviewing only the old stuff, she said.
“My main concern is Dead Week,” Mendieta said. That’s the all-important mid-December week before finals when classes are canceled and GSIs are supposed to hold marathon office hours and discussions so students have the best chance of doing well on exams. “I’m just worried.”
One little-known role of graduate student instructors — which students consider essential — is evaluating grade disputes.
“If some grade is wrong, the turnaround time to fix it will be much longer,” said Mendieta’s yoga partner, Kanchana Samala, 21, a data science major who hasn’t been able to access data sets she needs because of the strike.
“I honestly don’t think the UC system can function without teaching assistants. It’s stressing us out,” said Samala, who is in the unusual position of working as an undergraduate teaching assistant. So in addition to being dependent on the striking workers, she’s also one of them.
On Monday, professors joined their student colleagues on picket lines across UC’s nine undergraduate campuses. At UCSF, a medical school and the only UC campus without undergraduates, striking researchers staged a raucous rally. And at UC Berkeley, hundreds of strikers marched on the chancellor’s mansion, although Chancellor Carol Christ doesn’t live there.
Untenured lecturers, however, are not allowed to strike. That has put Rutie Adler, who teaches Hebrew at UC Berkeley, in a difficult position.
“For the first time in my life, I crossed a picket line,” she said. “I felt lousy.”
So Adler said she has canceled the rest of her classes until the strike is resolved. “It’s like you’re cheating to say, ‘Oh, I’ll just put them online,’ ” she said as she walked through the near-empty halls of the Social Sciences building on Friday. “It’s against the spirit of the strike, and I believe they are right.”
Undergraduates, squeezed in the middle, wonder where that leaves them.