NYU Tracking Which Grad Students Are Now Striking

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The New York Sun

New York University officials are making a list and checking it twice.


The school is keeping track of which graduate students have resumed their teaching assistant duties and which have stayed on strike. As of yesterday, those students in the naughty column are no longer guaranteed stipends in the spring semester, though NYU has given some indication that it would pardon students who return to work this week.


Yesterday was the deadline for graduate students to end their strike without risking their stipends, which many rely on for living expenses. While the union that formerly represented the graduate students has not called off the strike, NYU officials said about 75% of the teaching assistants showed up to their assigned classes yesterday. That would leave about 200 students who are still on strike.


“We’re proceeding to establish who is and who is not teaching in order to determine who is eligible to teach next semester,” an NYU spokesman, John Beckman, said in a statement. “There are a lot of people on campus who would like to see a resolution, and there are a lot of positive conversations going on. There is flexibility to suspend consequences retroactively.”


A Dutch graduate student in the French department, Jeppe Nielsen, said he would refuse to cross the picket line and thus sacrifice his stipend in the spring semester by. “It was a personal choice. … There’s no doubt in my mind,” he said.


Rather than actually punishing students who continue to strike, an action that could spark a backlash among the faculty, NYU appears to be counting on the persuasive power of its threat to do the trick.


If enough students resume their teaching duties, then NYU won’t be forced to take harsh measures to ensure that the fall semester’s undergraduate courses come to completion. A faction of faculty, belonging to a group called Faculty Democracy, has threatened to withhold grades, or even suspend the graduate student admissions process, if the university retaliates by eliminating student stipends.


Since November 9, hundreds of doctoral and master’s students who serve as teaching assistants have refused to grade papers and exams, lead discussion sections, or teach classes to protest the administration’s refusal to negotiate another contract with the United Automobile Workers. Until this summer, NYU was the only private university to have a union of graduate students but broke off contact with the union after receiving permission from the Republican-dominated National Labor Relations Board.


Universities across the country are watching closely NYU’s handling of the strike. The spread of graduate student unionization in America is in many respects hinging on the outcome of the labor action in Washington Square.


At a meeting of the arts and science faculty on Tuesday night, professors passed a resolution that called on the graduate students to end their strike but opposed penalizing students by taking away stipends.


NYU’s president, John Sexton, has warned students that they risk losing their spring semester stipend if they continue striking beyond the deadline.


If they go on strike in the spring semester, they could lose an entire year of stipends and teaching eligibility.


NYU doctoral students are a paid a minimum of $19,000 a year while earning their degrees as part of their fellowships in exchange for serving as teaching assistants for two or three years.


The New York Sun

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