We write as faculty disturbed that 67 UCSD graduate workers have been charged in a student conduct process for exposing the campus' failure to maintain its wage obligations and core educational and research mission through their nonviolent disruption of an alumni awards event on May 5, 2023. We call on the UCSD administration to withdraw the charges immediately. We also call upon the Graduate Division to dismiss any cases that are already in process.

UCSD is not guaranteeing to cover the increased graduate worker salary negotiated last fall. This has caused budgetary issues for departments and faculty. In the wake of the new UAW contract, many parts of campus have faced austerity. Biological sciences has eliminated TAed sections for many courses. We hear reports from many departments that graduate workers are being hired at smaller than 50% appointments to fit department budgets despite needing to work 20 hours a week in violation of the contract and affordability. And yet, as campus leadership has sent departments into a scramble, the chancellor managed to raise millions of dollars to give himself a $500,000 per year pay increase.

Graduate student workers have been continuing to protest the administration on these and other points (for example, as related to claims of retaliation for strike activity). We believe that by protesting, graduate student workers are fighting for a better and stronger university for all of us, one that stabilizes the TA system that our university relies upon and ensures that they can carry out their studies and research at the highest level. 

As scholars, we know that straightforward and critical speech, peaceful disruption, and the creation of inconvenience have always been key tools of social movements. And we also know that they are always subject to criticism. Martin Luther King Jr., arrested in 1963 for direct action, explained the necessity of direct action “to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.” Graduate workers who disrupted the ceremony on May 5 were engaging in the valuable work of critique, and we are disturbed that the UCSD administration has chosen to retaliate against them. This retaliation was done through the weaponization of the student conduct process, with the aim of suppressing future protest, which is all the more egregious at a time when space for critical engagement and dissent in institutions of higher learning are under attack throughout the country. Photographic and video evidence that we have seen do not show any physical assault (see here, for example). Feelings of discomfort, embarrassment, or concern stemming from graduate workers’ free expression of their grievances do not warrant such a charge. Singling out a union member through transphobic language in charging documents is unacceptable.

We reaffirm the graduate student workers’ collective demands, outlined in this petition and reproduced below. We urge you to withdraw all charges immediately.

1. Withdraw all outstanding student misconduct charges relating to protected union activity

2. Uphold the Academic Worker union contracts that were agreed to, including:

• End all arbitrary Student Researcher appointments below 50% FTE

• Provide Postdocs with contractual two-year initial appointments

• Stop reducing supplemental compensation (“top-ups”) and summer pay guarantees to circumvent wage increases

• Resolve illegal retaliatory ‘U’ grades against striking workers

3. Allocate central funding to fully fund our contracts and ensure quality research and education