UPDATE (4/10, 1:40 MST) BREAKING: INJUNCTION DENIED!!!!
1) Listen to this episode of Jacobin’s Behind the News, for an interview with Donna Murch (associate prof. of history at Rutgers University) talking about the state of affairs at Rutgers, with especially relevant comments about unions at universities across the country:
2) The above discussion took place before the Rutgers strike that started this morning. Here’s some info on that from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the campus paper, The Daily Targum. This could be helpful on our campus in our dispute, along with the successful UC strike last month, which resulted in an “agreement hailed as a new national standard” (The Guardian).
2) The administration is threatening to cut grad worker pay. Things are already desperate enough for us; this would be devastating. GEO has put together a fundraiser to try to soften the blow of that. Consider contributing if you can! Read more about it here:
3) Here’s a short recap of the second week of the GEO strike:
4) The Lecturers’ Union (LEO) is showing solidarity, read their letter here:
5) Finally, let’s be clear about (1) where all the University money is going, and (2) why it has become so impossibly expensive, especially over the last three decades:
By the way, we don’t work for an hourly wage. It is no different, ultimately, from a stipend disbursed monthly. Were we to be paid hourly, we would all be able to report the extra hours we put into our courses (it is definitely a full-time job). We are half-time employees, so it is just assumed that we only did 20 hours of labor each week, no matter that we put in many extra hours every week, so that comes out to $30,800 a year, only marginally better than the 24K paid out to us now—and that only after three years, after three more years of inflation, a potential recession, that much more housing swallowed by corporations and investment firms. I have no doubt that by then 30K would be only marginally less useless as 24K now. Meanwhile this man makes how much, and er… what about those coaches? 👀
PS, the administration’s lawyer just tried to characterize grad students by comparing us to domestic abusers because they couldn’t find any undergrads to testify to their claim of irreparable harm. The union lawyers objected right away and the judge sustained. (via updates on the GEO Discord live chat from several of my fellow grads in the courtroom) This ought to make it entirely clear what the administration’s stance is toward their students.
Ps, Separately from the strike, I’m calling for a Neurodiversity Constellation Center based on the results of a survey I conducted informally last fall. Read about it here: Call for a Neurodiversity Constellation Center at University of Michigan
Previous Strike Posts:
Another Neurodivergent Queer Writes A Blog! 
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