Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

edition.cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 445 posts

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#301

Post by asdff »

valid4life wrote: post #285
saagarjha wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My professor reached out to me and other high scorers in the course requesting us to recreate the grading infrastructure as he believes our true grades will never be received from our fired TA. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he's asking you to work on grading infrastructure?

Me along with other students who did well on exams + assignments that were graded and given out before the strikes really gained traction.

I hope you kindly email the professor and ask him or her to to their job and grade their course.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#302

Post by [deleted] »

valid4life wrote: post #115
awinder wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened with your grades in those classes? I read the university systems release and this article and couldn’t glean the details. Is that course’s grades still just up in the air?

For many classes, grades were withheld and then released as the TAs did not want to lose their jobs. My TA was not one of them. For a class that needs tests graded, this isn't as much of an issue, but in my case, the class is a Distributed Systems course and the projects we built are quite extensive. My professor reached out to me and other high scorers in the course requesting us to recreate the grading infrastructu…

[deleted]

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#303

Post by russellendicott »

option wrote: post #128
papeda wrote: post #108

There are about 1800 UCSC graduate students [1]. From this 2014-15 UCSC budget report [2] there is a very near 2:1 masters:phd graduation ratio. Assuming there are 2 years of masters students and 6 of PhD at any one time, that makes PhD students 60% of “graduate students”. Let’s make this easy by saying 1000 PhD students (if anything I imagine it’s way less than this — as I understand, monetizing masters students has…

"lot of people on HN probably see the current low wages as a natural function of supply and demand" - as a former grad student at one of UC's campuses - this is not as simple as you put it. A lot of grad students are international students (like I was) and they simply can't work anywhere else due to their visa restrictions.

Sounds a lot like a mild version of indentured servitude. Cheap labor for the university.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#304

Post by asdff »

refurb wrote: post #281
epistasis wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If somebody bargains on your behalf, and you have no way to reject what they bargained for, can you really say that they acted in your behalf at all?

Sure. That comes with the territory of joining a union. The union negotiates on behalf of all members under the contract. If they didn't want that arrangement, they shouldn't have joined a union or that union in particular.

So what now? CA is a closed shop state, the students can't cancel their membership and join a new one. So they strike without the support of their union, their union gets sued by UC, and now their union is countersuing for a cost of living adjustment as of three days ago. If all pans out, taking this wildcat strike was exactly the right move to make.

https://uaw2865.org/uc-student-worker-union-files-unfair-lab...

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#305

Post by valid4life »

asdff wrote: post #301
valid4life wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me along with other students who did well on exams + assignments that were graded and given out before the strikes really gained traction.

I hope you kindly email the professor and ask him or her to to their job and grade their course.

I did turn the offer down because I didn't feel comfortable with it. I may not be 100% for this strike, but I would not want to be apart of that. I really appreciate your responses here as it is illuminating many things I hadn't originally considered. The TA's clearly have way too many responsibilities for the pay they receive. I just feel like undergraduates are really getting screwed when there has to be other methods... Of course, I have never considered them so what good is it for me to say that lol.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#306

Post by asdff »

thanatosmin wrote: post #154
vga805 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange. every university im familiar with has grad students teaching courses, not just TAing. i did it myself.

Maybe it's more common than I thought... I've only ever seen TAs teaching discussion sections.

Depends on the course. For a large 300 person bio lecture, it will be the professor lecturing and the TA leading a quiz/homework section with like 30 people. For smaller classes with only 30 people, it's probably going to be a TA lecturing.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#307

Post by asdff »

Thorrez wrote: post #246
thanatosmin wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edited my comment. I'm pretty sure at UCSC TAs were also responsible for assigning the final grades in a course.

Hmm. Even if TAs don't assign grades for a course, if they refuse to grade the assignments that can make it extremely difficult for the professor to give the students accurate grades.

The prof would have to just go through the stack themselves then.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#308

Post by int_19h »

shitgoose wrote: post #274
unethical_ban wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "fair representation" And, tell me how not having any union is better for all than an imperfect union.

Is there a union of software developers? Would you like to start an imperfect one? Anyone?

Starting one is fairly risky. A better question might be, how many people would join an established one.
Post reply on HN