As far as I can tell (I attend UC Santa Barbara, where graduate students started striking Thursday) this has only strengthened the resolve of the protesters. There were complaints about the strike "hurting the quality of education" which may have turned some against the graduate students involved but with this move (specifically, firing 52 number of graduate students, not providing appointments to others) I can only see the issue getting more heated.
I find it ironic that on the same page where the University is detailing how badly they intend to treat the graduate students, they also have a link to make a gift to the University.<p>If I were in a position to make a significant gift, I would be more inclined to make it to the graduate students (e.g. through a strike fund, or other means).
One of the better ways that occurred to me when we Cal grad students were protesting a couple of decades ago was, rather than <i>withhold</i> the grades, simply to give everyone an 'A'. That form of protest most directly targeted the institution since it simply affected its reputation. The students were not hurt, the grad students could comply with their obligations and move on. I am surprised that such an approach never took off.
Some background:<p><a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxe45b/graduate-student-strikes-are-spreading-in-california" rel="nofollow">https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxe45b/graduate-student-s...</a>
Striking coincidence that I’m reading a biography on Jimmy Hoffa right now.<p>$2500 a year is a slap in the face to the $1800 / month the students were demanding.<p>Something needs to change there. For the Midwest small college town where I went $20,000-30,000 was plenty (for people without kids at least). I imagine it’d be a lot harder in CA coastal cities.
When I was represented by a graduate student union, our department actually tried to raise wages.
This was opposed by the union (solidarity!), and the result was that the department essentially invented fake courses to pad the hours of the grad students; the union didn't care because we were "working more" rather than getting "paid more"<p>This led me to believe that grad student unions were not a particularly useful way of dealing with issues affecting graduate students.