Despite the gloom felt by some undergraduates returning from break to find the labor situation more acrimonious than ever, cheer poured forth from the Yale Administration. Our Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, exulted at the demise of GESO's grade strike. Chair of the History Department Paul Bushkovitch insisted vehemently that the cancellation of the strike was a total surrender on the part of GESO. Even student newspapers which editorialized before break that the Administration should "give GESO a taste of its own medicine" covered the end of the grade strike with a generally optimistic tone.
Except, of course, by the graduate students. They were hit with everything the Administration could devise to bludgeon them into cancelling the grade strike. Graduate student teachers who refused to turn in grades will be barred from teaching this semester. President Richard Levin, GRD '74, appealed to the faculty to isolate and reprimand graduate students who are members of GESO. Three striking TAs were singled out for no apparent reason and brought before academic disciplinary hearings - all three are women, two are foreign, and two are minority. Essentially, the Administration used academic sanctions against students to punish them as employees. Getting a letter of reprimand in one's academic file for engaging in union activities is not only morally disgusting, but probably illegal. It is the Administration, not GESO, that is injecting politics into the classroom.
We cannot ignore the fact that none of the goings-on during our absence escaped the attention of the media. We all read about Yale's actions in our hometown papers from coast to coast. Hundreds of letters are flowing into Woodbridge Hall. Thousands of professors nationwide are signing petitions. Yale is on the airwaves and on the front pages. Why are we getting all this attention? For our small section sizes? For our excellent dining halls? No - simply it is because we are the school that loves to bust unions.
Unfortunately for Yale's image, many people are recognizing the Administration's policy for what it is: an extremely dangerous subterfuge, to borrow the words of CUNY professor Frances Fox-Piven, who was one of the 138 to get arrested at the rally in support of striking teachers. Thus far only Yale undergraduates have been duped by Brodhead's verbosity - everyone else recognizes brutality and stubbornness for what they are. Academic freedom has been violated at Yale, the place where it should be most zealously guarded.
What is to be done? Whether or not undergraduates are convinced that GESO should be recognized as a union, we cannot remain indifferent to the two outrages that are being perpetrated by this Administration: a) the refusal to even sit down with graduate student representatives to discuss their grievances, b) the academic slandering of graduate students who engage in union activity - even those like Rogers Smith who disagree with GESO's aims admit that academic sanctions for union organizing are probably illegal, not to mention morally reprehensible. Undergraduates should stand up and send a clear message to this Administration that these outrages will not be tolerated because they are unnecessarily jeopardizing our education by precipitating a strike, and they are besmirching the reputation of this University. Undergraduates should be tired of sitting idly by while your education is being gambled with at the bargaining table and your school is being degraded in the press.
Nick Allen is a senior in Davenport.
Copyright 1995, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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