Undergraduates at Yale and Columbia universities are feeling the effects of the first-ever simultaneous Ivy League graduate student walkout this week.
Hundreds of graduate students have been participating in rallies and events, as well as abandoning their classes, in an effort to bring school administrators to the table and gain union status for their groups.
Students at Penn have not been unaffected by the efforts either, as members of Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania held a rally on Tuesday to promote awareness about its quest for expanded health insurance. About 50 individuals marched down Locust Walk carrying signs and chanting.
"It really went well ... and we were very visible, so it was good for our organization," GET-UP co-Chairman Joe Drury said.
Farther up the eastern seaboard, members of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization at Yale and Columbia's Graduate Student Employees United have been conducting rallies of their own.
Yale "President Levin has left teachers no choice but to strike. He would rather jeopardize labor peace and undergraduate education than sit down and discuss basic issues of fairness," GESO co-Chairwoman Mary Reynolds said in a statement earlier this week.
The strikes began on Monday when Yale graduate students were joined by state politicians, including Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and several other prominent figures.
Picketing continued at both campuses on Tuesday, and around 450 classes at Yale were either canceled due to or impacted by the graduate groups' actions, the graduate students said.
On Wednesday, graduate students from both schools, as well as some from Penn, met at Columbia for a rally involving hundreds of people. The students were joined by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney in their march.
Today, the Yale graduate students will be joined by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who will be coming to campus to support their cause.
Earlier this year, however, the National Labor Relations Board ruled against graduate student teaching assistants, saying that they do not have the legal status to be unionized.
"I support what they're doing, and traditionally, a strike is the only thing that bosses listen to," Drury said. "No union wants to go on strike, it's just the last resort."
Over the course of the year, the two groups have received letters of support from 43 members of the House of Representatives as well as seven senators, including Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John Edwards (D-N.C.).
However, the groups' actions may not be having as much of an effect as originally hoped.
First-year Yale business student Michael Smith said, "It really hasn't affected campus that much, maybe because there's so few [people striking]."
Smith added that he had not heard of many classes being affected by the strike.
"The only things I have noticed are two instances of about 15 people walking by my classes, but that's about it," Smith said.
