In a procession that featured a fake Christmas tree covered in postcards, signs with slogans such as "College Hall is not above the Law" and chants of "Drop the appeal!", Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania members and supporters came together in a march to College Hall on Friday.
Despite the cold, more than 50 undergraduates, graduates and community supporters gathered in front of College Hall in a rally organized by GET-UP -- the American Federation of Teachers-affiliated group that will represent graduate students in contract negotiations if they vote to unionize.
The group asked University President Judith Rodin and other administrators to allow fair union elections by dropping the University's appeal against the National Labor Relations Board's November decision that gave graduate students at Penn the right to unionize.
Several representatives of GET-UP made their way into College Hall, and although more were turned away by guards at the door, the representatives managed to give hundreds of postcards to Rodin's assistant. The postcards were signed by students and community members urging Rodin herself to remain neutral during the election campaign, recognize the results of the election and if graduate students do decide to unionize, bargain fairly with GET-UP.
"That was our Christmas gift to Judith Rodin," third-year School of Arts and Sciences and Graduate School of Education student Todd Wolfson said.
Third-year English graduate student Veronica Schanoes argued that graduate students need better contracts because of the extensive, often unrecognized work graduate students do.
"A lot of the labor that goes into student teaching isn't obvious," she said. But "we're some of the only people [students] know face to face."
"We are also acting as unofficial advisers" to students, she said, and "doing the work that full professors don't want to get their hands dirty with."
Schanoes added the group is asking for the administration to drop its appeal for numerous reasons.
"We all really care about our teaching, and we're the ones in there doing it," she said, but the administration is "not interested in what we have to say."
College sophomore Claire Michaels stressed that the unionization issue affects undergraduates as well as graduate students.
"Undergraduates should pay attention to how the University uses its resources," she said.
Although she noted that the decision to support unionization is up to each individual student, everyone should be concerned about graduate student work conditions because many undergraduates will one day be graduate students too, she said.
"It's not that far off," Michaels said.
The NLRB's decision was only the fifth time graduate students at a private university have been allowed to unionize.
Last Thursday, the University filed an appeal, sending the case to the NLRB's national office in Washington, D.C.
Similar cases at Brown and Columbia universities are also awaiting appeals.
The NLRB has yet to announce whether or not it will direct an election early next year or simply put elections on hold until after the appeal has been decided.
