A Letter to Columbia University’s Provost re: Graduate Student Unionization

For years, graduate student workers at Columbia University and beyond have lived in fear of repercussions if they fought their most basic rights: fair and timely pay, protection from sexual harassment, sufficient housing stipends, medical and dental insurance, etc. And for years, graduate student workers have been the heart and soul of this university.

I wrote an op/ed last April about why undergraduates like myself should care about graduate student unions. I wrote in depth about my experience, as a first year student at Columbia last year, having an amazing grad student professor, and I will tell you that she honestly helped me feel comfortable staying at Columbia when I was considering dropping out after my assaults.

Graduate students conduct your research, teach your students, and grade your tests. They, along with adjunct faculty members and other under-compensated workers, are the ones who give us the education your admissions office advertises.

The point I am making is that this campus is run by underappreciated, under-compensated workers. If grad student workers are not protected from harassment, if they do not feel safe continuing to work, if they are not fairly compensated, my Columbia education means nothing to me. As I said in my op/ed in April:

“Despite what the colorful, laminated brochures in admissions offices tell us, many of our campuses run on the exploitation of workers — on unsafe working conditions and insufficient compensation.”

At Columbia, you and I both know that unsafe working conditions extend beyond the abhorrent treatment of graduate student workers.

Take the workers in JJ’s (one of our dining halls), who got so sick from the extreme heat due to the pizza oven in the John Jay dining hall above them years ago that we now have sushi instead of pizza.

Take the underpaid workers who spent countless hours planting flowers on the lawns by the sundial so you could post “spring has sprung” on Facebook, as if their underpaid labor never happened.

Take the graduate students who spend time meeting with undergrads for University Writing day in and day out, sometimes reading 40,000 words of first year student essays in two nights to give feedback, all while simultaneously getting their own educations.

Take the graduate students who continue to pursue their research while being sexually harassed by professors who get away with their actions because of the overarching threat of pulling a grad student’s funding for reporting harassment.

What a graduate student union would ask of you — or rather, thanks to the ruling by the National Labor Relations Board yesterday that determined graduate students in the United States have the right to unionize, will ask of you — is to treat graduate student workers like human beings. You can try to scare students, with negative emails, into thinking the NLRB decision is trying to bring an evil outside force onto our idyllic campus until you are blue in the face, but that argument is predicated upon us, as readers of your emails, trusting in you more than a random “outside organization.” It is predicated on us viewing you and our campus as idyllic as-is.

I can say, as a sexual assault survivor, queer woman, and activist, the Columbia University administration has done nothing to gain my trust and loyalty. You have done nothing to prove to me that you will do anything other than cut corners to save costs at the expense of workers’ safety and livelihoods.

I stand firmly in solidarity with graduate student workers unionizing at Columbia University and beyond, and wholly reject any ill-thought-out attempt by you or any other administrator to dissuade graduate student workers from seeking the rights, protections, and dignity they deserve.

Columbia can do better, and I am thrilled the graduate student workers at Columbia are proving that to you.