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What About Grading?
The university’s team’s decision to cut off negotiations on November 20th resulted in a needless ten-day extension of our strike. Had the university continued to negotiate in good faith, our strike could have been over by now.
Instead of bargaining between November 21st and November 30th, the university’s team appears to have been busy preparing to hire scabs to grade our students' work, a plan that the university has since indicated was an error. (Read more about this at the bottom of this email.)
We are striking because our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions.
How can we be effective instructors if we can’t afford to see the doctor, struggle to pay rent, lack real recourse against harassment, or have to worry about whether we will have an appointment next year?
It is critical that we continue to withhold our labor, including not grading, until a fair contract is reached.
This is our source of leverage in negotiations.
Academic workers across the country have gone on strike countless times over the last 60+ years. In several instances, professors and grad students have struck through the grading period.
There is no precedent for students’ visa status being affected by such a strike. Nor is there a precedent for students being penalized with poor grades.
As a reminder, the University has the power to change the grade deadline. The University did so during Covid-19 and could do it again.
When PhD student-teachers at Columbia University went on strike in 2021, Columbia extended the grade deadline. The University of California just changed the grading deadline this week as a result of a strike there.
The university is trying to pull at our heart strings and cause us to break the strike. This would work to the university’s advantage in negotiations and will work against the students, faculty, and entire New School community.
It is the bargaining committee’s hope that the university moves with urgency and offers us a fair deal that will allow us to return to our students ASAP.
If you are receiving questions from students about grades, see this template email which you can use to reply to them.
You should also encourage your students to reach out to their college’s dean to urge the university to return to the bargaining table and bring an end to our strike. Students can base their email on this template.
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