POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN
Before the COVID-19 pandemic absorbed everyone’s attention, brought much of the country to a halt, and pushed higher education, what continues of it, online, the higher ed community was focused on the remarkable wildcat strike of graduate student employees that began at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) and spread throughout the UC system. But that struggle continues, as the strikers are now mounting what they call a “digital picket,” continuing their refusal to submit grades and declining to hold online classes. The good news is that UC has agreed to bargain over changes in the workplace due to Covid-19. And, after negotiations between the union and the university, UC agreed to reinstate health care coverage for all 80+ Santa Cruz strikers who were fired due to their participation in the wildcat actions. However, the fired strikers remain ineligible for employment and disciplinary proceedings against them continue. In response, the Faculty Organizing Group at UC Santa Cruz issued the following letter, signed by 176 members of the faculty.
March 25, 2020
Dear iEVC Lori Kletzer, Graduate Dean Quentin Williams, Dean of Students Garrett Naimen, Vice Provost for Student Success Jaye Padgett, and Dean of Undergraduate Education Richard Hughey:
Thank you all for the tireless work you and the campus administration are doing to protect members of our community while maintaining UCSC’s functionality in the midst of an increasingly grave global crisis. We are grateful for the decision to provide health insurance to the graduate students whose appointments have been revoked, including to those who will be on Leave of Absence. We urge you to extend this compassion by reinstating the eligibility for employment of those graduate students, who remain without income in one of the worst economic and health crises this country has seen, and by halting all pending disciplinary hearings.
This is a moment in which we are all being asked to put collective well-being first, to suspend our usual practices and policies, and to ensure that energy, effort, and resources go where they are most needed. We are concerned that the university continues, remotely, its employment warning hearings, student conduct hearings, and Skelly hearings. Even prior to the current crisis, we have documented troubling irregularities in and discrepancies between the hearings, and there have been delays in following up with students afterwards. Many students who went to their hearings in mid-February were told that their investigations would conclude in two weeks, yet they have heard nothing. Others have had to undergo their various hearings remotely, in ways that are far from uniform and standard. Some students in off-campus locations, or in a state of indefinite suspension and barred from campus, report insufficient internet and cell phone coverage to access remote hearings and have received no university help in doing so. At least two students are negotiating the hearing process while themselves sick and trying to garner medical documentation from overburdened health workers in order to extend the timeline of appeal. All of this is happening as students have had to simultaneously conclude the quarter, leave campus if possible, find the resources to ready themselves for remote learning, and cope with the manifold stresses of everyday life in a global pandemic.
We recognize that these are unparalleled circumstances for all university procedures, but we write today to emphasize the human cost of continuing the hearings. Graduate students involved in wildcat strike actions and their undergraduate supporters have been arrested and, in some cases, brutalized; they have been banned from campus; they have lost their jobs and with that, for some, their housing. These students — many undocumented, low-income, housing insecure, and dependent on their university employment — are also being compelled to negotiate unfamiliar bureaucratic procedures in a climate of surveillance, threats, and uncertain avenues and timelines of appeal. In the midst of the campus shutdown and a state-wide shelter-in-place order, some undergraduates have received sentences of a year of probation and required restorative justice education. Surely now is not the right moment for productive “educational conversations” about community standards and “time, place, and manner” debates. In fact, stressed and overwhelmed students are experiencing the hearings only as punitive.
Despite the fact that courts across the country are suspending their hearings, the university proceeds with punishment as usual. In the best of times, this course of action is questionable. In the present moment, it is unethical and inhumane. To further punish those who have already been punished through an excruciating, opaque, and time-intensive bureaucratic process is detrimental to the health and well-being of undergraduate and graduate students. Such a policy also places intense demands on faculty, many of whom are providing advice, support, and even digital accompaniment to students facing hearings. We do this as we are simultaneously concluding winter quarter; teaching ourselves — with the invaluable aid of CITL’s rapidly deployed websites and workshops — how to teach remotely this Spring; and facing additional burdens of child, elder, and community care. We urge you not to continue to divert your faculty’s time and resources. We further urge you to show your students the compassion that this moment surely demands.
We ask you to:
- Cease any new hearings until you have worked through the backlog and concluded the cases of those who have already undergone this process.
- Drop or, at the very least, postpone all of the student conduct charges related to student activism.
- Rescind the current interim suspensions for all student activists as they present no threat to the operations of the campus and the Student Code of Conduct states that students “shall be restricted only to the minimum extent necessary.”
Let us all bring our collective energies to what matters most.
PLEASE SIGN IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER BY YOUR FIRST NAME
- Adriana Manago, Psychology
- Alan Christy, History
- Alejandra Kramer, Anthropology
- Alice Yang, History and CRES
- Alma Heckman, History
- A.M. Darke, AGPM, DANM, and CRES
- Amanda Lashaw, Education
- Amanda M. Smith, Literature
- Amy C. Beal, Music
- Amy Mihyang Ginther, Theater Arts
- Andrea Cook, Psychology
- Andrew Mathews, Anthropology
- Anjuli Verma, Politics & Legal Studies
- Anna Friz, Film and Digital Media
- Anna Tsing, Anthropology
- B. Ruby Rich, Film+Digital Media
- Barbara Rogoff, Psychology
- Benjamin Storm, Psychology
- Bettina Aptheker, Feminist Studies
- Bob Majzler, Psychology and College 10
- Bruce Thompson, History and Literature
- Camilla Hawthorne, Sociology and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
- Camilo Gómez-Rivas, Literature
- Carla Freccero, Literature and History of Consciousness
- Catherine Jones, History
- Catherine Ramírez, LALS
- Chris Chen, Literature
- Chris Hables Gray, Cont. Lecturer, Crown College
- Christie McCullen, Sociology
- Christine Hong, Literature and CRES
- Christine King, Kresge and Porter Colleges
- Christopher Connery, Literature
- Cynthia Lewis, Education
- Cynthia Ling Lee, Theater Arts
- Cyntia Polecritti, History
- Daniel Selden, Literature
- Danilyn Rutherford, Anthropology
- David Anthony, History
- David Kant, Music
- Dean Mathiowetz, Politics
- Dee Hibbert-Jones, Art
- Derede Arthur, Writing Program
- Diane Gifford-Gonzalez, Anthropology
- Dion Farquhar, Crown College
- Don Brenneis, Anthropology
- Dorian Bell, Literature
- Eduardo Mosqueda, Education
- Elaine Sullivan, History
- Elizabeth Beaumont, Politics and Legal Studies
- Elizabeth Swensen, AGPM, DANM
- Elliot Anderson, Art
- Emily Schach, Anthropology
- Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, Astronomy
- Eric Porter, History, HistCon, CRES
- Eva Bertram, Politics
- Fernando Leiva, Latin American and Latino Studies
- Fitnat Yildiz, METX
- Gabriela Arredondo, Latin American and Latino Studies
- Gail Hershatter, History
- Gary Young, Literature
- George Bunch, Education
- Giulia Centineo, LAAL
- Grace Pena Delgado, History
- Greg O’Malley, History
- GS Sahota, Literature
- Gustavo Vazquez, Film & Digital Media
- H. Marshall Leicester, Literature
- Hillary Angelo, Sociology
- Hinrich Boeger, MCD Biology
- Hiroshi Fukurai, Sociology and Legal Studies
- Hunter Bivens, Literature
- Irene Lusztig, Film + Digital Media
- Isaac Julien CBE RA, Arts
- Ivy Sichel, Linguistics
- Jason Samaha, Psychology
- Janette Dinishak, Philosophy
- Jeffrey Erbig, Latin American and Latino Studies
- Jennifer Derr, History
- Jennifer Gonzalez, History of Art and Visual Culture
- Jennifer Kelly, Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
- Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, Film and Digital Media
- Jeremy Gauger,
- Jerry Zee, Anthropology and CRES
- Jessica Taft, Latin American and Latino Studies
- Josefina Lundblad-Janjić, Languages & Applied Linguistics
- Josh Brahinsky, College 10
- Joy Hagen, Writing Program
- Judith Habicht Mauche, Anthropology
- Judith Scott, Education
- Julianne Hazlewood, Environmental Studies, Rachel Carson College
- Juned Shaikh, History
- Karen Bassi, Literature and Classics
- Katherine Seto, Environmental Studies
- Katie Monsen, Environmental Studies, Rachel Carson College
- Keiko Yukawa, Languages and Applied Linguistics
- Kent Eaton, Politics
- Kirsten Silva Gruesz, Literature
- Laurie Palmer, Art
- Lindsey Dillon, Sociology
- Lindsey Kuper, Computer Science and Engineering
- Lisa Rofel, Anthropology
- Lora Bartlett, Education
- Lorato Anderson, Politics & Latin American and Latino Studies
- Lucinda Pease-Alvarez, Education
- Madeleine Fairbairn, Environmental Studies
- Madeline Lane-McKinley, Writing Program
- Madhavi Murty, Feminist Studies
- Marc Matera, History
- Marcia Barrett, Library
- Margaret Amis
- Margarita Azmitia, Psychology
- Maria Elena Diaz, History
- Marianne Weems, Theater Arts and DANM
- Marilyn Walker, Computer Science and Engineering
- Mark Baker, Writing Program/Oakes College
- Mark Nash, Arts
- Martin Devecka, Literature
- Matthew Lasar, History
- Maya Peterson, History
- Maywa Montenegro, Environmental Studies
- Megan Moodie, Anthropology
- Megan Thomas, Politics
- Micah Perks, Literature
- micha cárdenas, CRES, DANM, AGPM
- Michael M. Chemers, Theater Arts
- Michael Mateas, Computational Media
- Michael Urban, Politics
- Miriam Greenberg, Sociology
- Muriam Haleh Davis, History
- Nathaniel Deutsch, History
- Neda Atanasoski, FMST
- Neel Ahuja, FMST and CRES
- Nick Mitchell, CRES and Feminist Studies
- Nicolas Davidenko, Psychology
- Nidhi Mahajan, Anthropology and CRES
- Nikolaos Sgourakis, Chemistry and Biochemistry
- Nirvikar Singh, Economics
- Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Computational Media
- Noel Smyth, History
- Noriko Aso, History
- Patricia Pinho, Latin American & Latino studies
- Patricia Zavella, Latin American & Latino Studies
- Patty Gallagher, Theater Arts
- Per Gjerde, Psychology
- Peter Alvaro, Computer Science and Engineering
- Phillip Hammack, Psychology
- Rebecca Covarrubias, Psychology
- Regina Day Langhout, Psychology
- Rick Prelinger, Film and Digital Media
- Rob Wilson, Literature
- Robbie Kubala, Philosophy
- Robert Boltje, Mathematics
- Robert Goff, Philosophy, Emeritus
- Ron Glass, Education
- Ronnie Lipschutz, Politics
- Russell Rodriguez, Music
- Ryan Bennett, Linguistics
- Sara Niedzwiecki, Politics
- Savannah Shange, Anthropology
- Scottt Vahradian, MCD Biology
- Sharon Kinoshita, Literature
- Sheeva Sabati, Feminist Studies, Oakes College, College 9/10
- Shelly Grabe, Psychology
- Shigeko Okamoto, Languages and Applied Linguistics
- Sikina Jinnah, ENVS
- Stacy Philpott, Environmental Studies
- Susan Carpenter, MCD biology
- Susan Gillman, Literature
- Susan Wright, Politics
- T. J. Demos, History of Art and Visual Culture
- Todd Nathan Thorpe, Cowell College
- Vanita Seth, Politics
- Warren Sack, Film + Digital Media
- Vilashini Cooppan, Literature and CRES
- Yasmeen Daifallah, Politics
- Zac Zimmer, Literature
