Graduate students at New York University have been on strike for almost one month. Today, they face an ultimatum from the university's president, but their peers at Penn are rallying to their cause.
NYU President John Sexton said last week that members of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee -- which orchestrated the work stoppage -- will lose their salaries if they do not return to the classroom.
In reaction to Sexton's e-mail, about 150 sympathetic undergraduates stormed the university's Bobst Library last Wednesday, causing security personnel to lock down the building.
In the wake of the events at NYU, members of Penn's graduate student union -- Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania -- are organizing a strike fund for their peers in GSOC, after whom they have modeled their own unionization efforts. Joe Drury, a fourth-year English Ph.D. student and former GET-UP chairman, said that the group has already raised over $1,000.
"We're very keen for the Penn community to know we're sticking by" GSOC, he said. "It's a situation that may end up happening on Penn's campus. People have been very inspired by" the strike.
In solidarity with the students, pro-union faculty members are threatening to withhold fall semester grades.
The strike began Nov. 9 and was sparked by Sexton's refusal to renew a contract with GSOC in August. The contract recognized graduate students as university employees with union bargaining power.
On Nov. 28, Sexton sent an e-mail to all NYU graduate students stating that "the time has come for the university to insist that the academic needs of its undergraduates be met."
Sexton wrote that there will be "consequences" for teaching assistants who do not return to class by today, including loss of their stipends and the ability to teach in the spring semester.
Those who return today will face no punishment. Even those who continue to strike will still receive full health insurance. Loans will be provided for striking students for whom the loss of a stipend "would create economic hardship," the e-mail read.
On Wednesday, a group of 200 NYU professors called Faculty Democracy said they may resort to canceling recitations to prevent administrators from determining which graduate students are on strike.
"Not only are many departments and departmental officers refusing to implement these draconian policies ... [but] the policies themselves are illegitimate," Faculty Democracy member and sociology professor Jeff Goodwin told the Washington Square News.
That same day, about 150 undergraduates, organized by a group called Graduate Undergraduate Solidarity, marched on Sexton's office in NYU's main library, attempting to present Sexton with a petition demanding negotiations with GSOC. This was followed by an impromptu charge of the building; students staged a sit-in outside the office. The building was subsequently sealed for a half an hour, but the students eventually dispersed peacefully when Sexton failed to appear.
Unlike Penn's graduate students, teaching assistants at NYU have full payment of comprehensive health care coverage. Under Penn's non-union contract, the University has already agreed to a $1,000-per-year increase in stipends through 2008.
University spokeswoman Lori Doyle could not be reached for comment, but she has previously said that while the University "is not opposed to unionization," it maintains that "graduate students are students and not employees."
