UC Santa Cruz grad student strike continues into new term
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (KION) Hundreds of graduate student instructors and teaching assistants at UC Santa Cruz are continuing to refuse to submit grades as a strike continues.
The strike, which began on Dec. 8, is now continuing into a second term. The graduate students are demanding that school administration grants them a cost-of-living adjustment.
The students are demanding a $1,412-a-month cost-of-living adjustment. The students say what they get paid now is not enough to pay for rent, groceries and other livable needs. Currently, student workers receive about $2,400 a month for their work as a teacher assistant or student instructor.
“We’re striking because we have no other choice,” said UCSC History of Consciousness graduate student Jack Davies. “We are spending more than half our paycheck on rent, falling deeper and deeper into debt, skipping meals, and find ourselves materially unable to do the research we came here to do.”
Students said that despite the widespread impact of the strike, administrators have refused to meet with strike representatives unless they call off the action.
“We’ve been very clear from the beginning that the strike will end the way it began: any offer made by the administration will be put to a vote by all graduate students,” strike participants said in a recent statement. “Until then, the call to action remains the same: Do Not Submit.”
