UC Santa Cruz To Striking Students: Stop Or Be Dismissed

SANTA CRUZ, CA — Graduate students at University of California, Santa Cruz have been calling for higher pay and striking for months, but a campus official announced Friday that students will not be employed in the spring semester if they continue to withhold fall semester grades and do not end the strike before midnight Saturday.

The statement comes after UC Santa Cruz graduate students escalated their strike last Monday, declining to teach, hold office hours, conduct research or grade. Students picketed last week and blocked roadways leading into the campus, causing 17 students to be arrested.

"This is not a step we have taken lightly. Contingency plans will be developed to mitigate the issues this will create once we understand who has returned to work and who has not," said Lori Kletzer, interim campus provost and executive vice chancellor in a statement. "I understand that this is going to result in challenges but believe at this point, it is our best option."

Students didn't back down and organized a walkout on Friday.

UC Santa Cruz alumni circulated a statement of solidarity, vowing to withhold donations to the university until students received a pay increase. More than 1,600 people had signed the statement as of Wednesday morning.

"Some of us were undergraduate students, taught and mentored by graduate students. Others of us navigated the lack of pay and precarity synonymous with graduate school at UC Santa Cruz," the statement said. "We refuse to stand idly by as UCSC administration continues to allocate funding to exorbitant salaries and housing stipends for administrators to the detriment of the students and workers at the heart of its intellectual community."

Graduate students began their efforts last year, by withholding fall semester grades as leverage for a pay increase that they say would help them better afford the high cost of living. The striking grad students are asking for a $1,412 cost of living adjustment. The current contract for student workers includes a 3 percent increase per year to reflect the cost of living, but the students say it's not enough.

The university announced last month plans to offer doctoral students support packages and create a need-based housing supplement program to offer $2,500 until more graduate housing is available.

Graduate students told campus administrators that the offer was encouraging but insufficient, and hundreds of students would go on strike.

The so-called wildcat strike is being performed without authorization from the UAW 2865 union that represents UC student workers.

Read UC Santa Cruz's full statement here.

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