My Stanford trajectory crashed and burned during the 2023-24 academic year. Financial uncertainty and academic backsliding were a lot to deal with. To the extent that I did show up to classes, or even left my room at all, my capacity was fading fast, and I adopted terrible coping mechanisms in response to my fits of extreme shame and indifference.
Everything at the time was pointing toward the academic suspension that I am currently serving. I cannot deny it was a softer landing, compared to the alternatives. If it weren’t for the teaching assistants (TAs) that supported me, things would have come close to ending much more terribly. One of my TAs accepted email responses for my assignments for most of the quarter because I was unable to enroll as a student, and could not access the Canvas page, until the final weeks of the quarter. Another TA helped me through assignments amidst difficulties that went so deep as to impact my very access to campus housing.
It is precisely because of my experience with TAs being such amazing advocates that the Stanford Graduate Workers Union (SGWU) is a cause near and dear to my heart. With graduate workers moving toward a potential strike, now is the time for the undergraduate population at large to seriously consider what SGWU’s fight could mean for them.
SGWU’s standoff with the University stands to put graduate workers in a better position to support undergraduates. With a bold economic platform in areas such as funding guarantees, housing and childcare, SGWU is serious about tackling their members’ persistent affordability concerns. These affordability pushes are far from the “unreasonable demands” that the University decries them as. Instead, they are a necessary response to how Stanford graduate workers’ lived experiences have amounted to an affordability crisis.
The University’s own data is clear. Thirty-four percent of Ph.D. respondents have delayed their medical care over cost concerns, 18% are working for pay beyond their primary graduate work “to cover the basic costs of living” and 11% have even seriously considered taking a leave of absence due to their financial stresses. As for master’s respondents, those numbers are 29%, 29% and 7% respectively. These affordability issues are exacerbated amongst graduate workers with disabilities, families or student visas. Stanford’s affordability status quo must change, and the only way forward is SGWU power.
SGWU’s demands will help graduate workers help undergraduates. Graduate workers will more easily spend time giving quality feedback on undergraduates’ assignments, in addition to being staunch advocates when undergraduates hope to secure academic accommodations and providing mentor-like support beyond the classroom. By meeting graduate workers’ affordability needs, undergraduate education itself will see real improvements, furthering Stanford’s overall academic excellence.
Supporting SGWU certainly benefits undergraduates on a host of other issues as well. On Title IX reform, SGWU is demanding “full, unrestricted protections” for the victims of sexual misconduct that the University has systematically failed. This push, given the union’s prospective threat to withhold the very academic labor that makes Stanford run, makes it that much harder for the University to continue ignoring student advocacy on this critical issue.
As for mental health, SGWU’s demand for “full coverage…to make up for the limited coverage and availability of Stanford CAPS” puts the University’s lackluster resources in the spotlight. Its added influence will pressure the University to act on an issue near and dear to many undergraduates’ hearts in ways that, say, the Undergraduate Senate pressure has largely fallen on deaf administrative ears.
Even on campus transportation, where graduate workers have previously put in the work for the Shopping Express pilot program, SGWU is demanding to improve the Marguerite even more. From those seeking to safely traverse campus at night to those wanting to be more present in off-campus communities, undergraduates aim to gain a lot from this demand.
In standing in solidarity with SGWU, undergraduates must realize that graduate workers are fighting on numerous issues that, after years of undergraduate advocacy, there could finally be some real movement on. More than that, they should join graduate workers in the fight for a fairer and more just campus community.
In the event of an SGWU strike, undergraduates must look beyond grading delays, section cancellations and even the tempting pay from temporary TA positions. A strike would be more than just a response to an unaffordable campus and provide more than just a clear benefit to various undergraduate advocacy efforts. Collective bargaining is also deeply rooted in the principles of social justice. A win for SGWU would make it that much harder for Stanford to keep defending its fundamentally anti-UG2 workplace culture of “surveillance, intimidation, favoritism and discrimination”; its Red Wedding massacre of the Creative Writing Program; and its atrocious record on campus antisemitism and islamophobia. Clearly, fighting for our graduate workers means fighting for all of us.
The time is now for undergraduates to join SGWU’s fight for a more affordable, fair and just Stanford. Graduate workers will welcome them on the picket lines. Should Stanford’s world-renowned academic work come to a halt, it will be undergraduates’ golden opportunity to help force Stanford into making the concessions that justice demands.