The Graduate Student Council (GSC) passed a bill that called for solidarity with striking graduate student workers at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). At their Wednesday meeting, councilors also discussed the upcoming Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) elections.
Graduate student workers at UCSC have been on strike for the past two weeks as a result of their demand for a $1,412 monthly cost of living adjustment. The strike occurred after months of dialogue between students and the UCSC administration, according to The New York Times.
Fourth-year law and international policy student Julia Neusner introduced the resolution to support the UCSC student workers in their strike.
“They’ve been met with oppressive resistance from the administration including threats of expulsion and employment termination,” Neusner said. “Their requests are being ignored by the administration, so we would like the GSC to pass a resolution that indicates that they stand in solidarity with these UCSC graduate students.”
Although standard procedure would require the GSC to wait until next Wednesday to vote on the resolution, communications co-term John Coffey ’19 M.A. ’20 noted the time-sensitivity of the issue and motioned for the Council to vote immediately.
The Council voted to suspend the procedure and passed the bill. All councilors voted in favor besides Neusner, who abstained as one of the resolution’s co-authors.
GSC co-chair fourth-year mechanical engineering Ph.D. student Yiqing Ding also encouraged councilors to run for council in the upcoming ASSU elections, noting that the filing period was extended by a week — from Feb. 21 to this Friday.
“The deadline was pushed back to allow for more candidates to file as some graduate students were unaware of the filing period being open,” wrote ASSU elections commissioner Christian Giadolor ’21 in an email to The Daily. “This follows protocol from last year in which the filing period was extended to accommodate for the schedules of graduate students and to ensure their participation in the general election.”
Ding also said that there has been a lack of advertisements sent out to graduate students about the upcoming election, saying that he will be “sending out a grad-wide email about elections” on Thursday as the current number of those who filed is “very low.”
Only three students have filed as of Wednesday evening, according to Giadolor, who added that “the commission is aware of a handful of others who intend to file but have not done so yet.”
“The majority of the 41 [Undergraduate Senate] candidates filed within 48 hours of the period closing, so we expect more candidates to file soon,” Giadolor wrote.
Contact Camryn Pak at cpak23 ‘at’ stanford.edu.