SANTA CRUZ — Graduate students began an open-ended wildcat strike Monday at UC Santa Cruz as they continue to call for a substantial pay increase.
Hundreds of demonstrators rallied at both campus entrances Monday, blocking the main entrance for hours throughout the afternoon and appearing to briefly close the campus to outside traffic altogether.
Because the strike was not authorized by the students’ union, participation was difficult to determine. Tony Boardman, co-president of the UCSC Graduate Student Association and among the striking teaching assistants, said he believes approximately half of UCSC’s 750 teaching assistants and graduate-student instructors were striking.
“It means we’re not holding sections or we’re holding alternative sections on the picket line,” he said. “It means we’re not attending lectures that the instructors hold for class, it means we’re canceling office hours, it means we’re refusing to grade until we get an offer.”
The striking teaching assistants were joined on the picket line by faculty and undergraduates, swelling the rally to include hundreds of demonstrators.
“I’m here to support the students who are central to our university,” said literature professor Vilashini Cooppan, adding that UCSC’s graduate students struggle to afford rent more than most of their peers across the University of California.
“When they can’t support themselves, they cannot do their work as students, they cannot do their work as teachers and all of our community suffers,” she said. “We all depend on their labor to make this place work.”
Smaller demonstrations reportedly took place Monday elsewhere in the UC system, where some graduate students are similarly campaigning for a pay increase.
University police closed High and Bay streets to traffic after demonstrators blocked the main campus entrance around noon. Both streets leading into campus remained closed by police late into the afternoon and California Highway Patrol advised motorists to avoid the campus area.
Video shows police confronting people demonstrating in the roadway at either entrance. At least one person was photographed in handcuffs, and in one video uniformed police can be seen pushing a woman away.
The bulk of police who had been present at the demonstration appeared to leave — or at least pull back — from the main campus entrance by midafternoon.
Rallyers, meanwhile, surrounded all four sides of the intersection leading to the main campus entrance at Bay and High streets where they chanted, danced and listened to speeches.
Reporters emerged from picketers that multiple people may have been cited and at least one person may have been arrested. The UCSC police department did not immediately confirm any arrests or citations and forwarded all requests to the university’s public affairs office.
A campus spokesman was unable to confirm those reports by press time.
The grassroots campaign has been ongoing for months at the Santa Cruz campus.
But Monday’s strike is an escalation that — if sustained with widespread participation — could have serious impacts on UCSC’s academic programs, which depend on teaching assistants to lead sections and grade coursework.
Complicating prospects of a resolution, the students’ actions are not authorized by UAW Local 2865, the union representing graduate-student workers across the University of California.
UCSC administrators have called the strike illegal and repeatedly insist they are unable to negotiate with the students outside of the union contract.
“This strike is prohibited under their current contract, and it is not sanctioned by their union. UC Santa Cruz has no authority to separately change an already agreed-upon, system-wide labor contract with the UAW,” the campus Public Affairs office said in a Feb. 7 message regarding Monday’s strike plans.
Unrest around the high cost of living on and off campus has long simmered at UCSC among students and staff.
Santa Cruz is among the nation’s least affordable rental markets when the income of its residents is taken account, and a number of teaching assistants report spending well over 50% of their wages — which average about $2,400 a month for nine months each year — on rent alone.
The current campaign dates back in November. Led by elected officers of the campus Graduate Student Association, the students wrote a letter to UCSC Chancellor Cynthia Larive demanding a $1,412 monthly raise for teaching assistants.
It escalated in December, when hundreds of teaching assistants refused to submit students’ grades from the fall quarter. About 200 graders have yet to submit course grades from that term, according to a recent campus message.
Last month, the students organized a “sick-out,” coordinating to call in a sick day to ramp up pressure and allow them to attend a UC regents meeting.
Larive, UCSC’s chancellor, since announced two new campus programs aimed at improving conditions for graduate students: A shortterm, needs-based $2,500 annual housing supplement, and a guaranteed extension of teaching assistant work and tuition waivers for up to five years for doctoral students.
Her announcement was also paired with disciplinary threats for students continuing to withhold grades. But rather than assuage tensions, student organizers have said it was a catalyst for the strike.
A general assembly of graduate students was scheduled later Monday where next steps would be planned.
Graduate Student Association co-president Yulia Gilichinskaya said she anticipated the strike would continue Tuesday. “If you ask me are we coming back tomorrow, the answer is absolutely yes,” she said.
