CCAS Statement on Withholding Grades

November 29, 2022

The Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at UCLA, continues to fully support our graduate students in their ongoing contract negotiations with the University of California. In honor of the 30th year anniversary of the student hunger strike that helped establish our department at UCLA, named after the great labor leader, César Chávez, we stand in solidarity with the 48,000 graduate students, postdocs, and other academic student employees, who are essential to the teaching and research mission of the University of California.

As the end of the Fall quarter nears, please know that if the state-sanctioned strike continues beyond the deadline to submit grades, we will be in solidarity with strikers and we will not submit grades. We support our department’s lecturers, teaching faculty who have had to organize for their own rights as recently as last year, to express their solidarity within the limits of the no-strike clause of their contract. We urge UC administrators to bargain in good faith, with the goal of dignified wages and working conditions for all its workers. And we urge California legislators to increase the funding of California’s higher education institutions.

Resources:

A powerpoint explaining why graduate student workers are striking

Faculty resources on grading

Multi-Unit Statewide Strike FAQs

Letter for UC faculty to sign

UC-AFT Guidance for Lecturers

 

Leisy Abrego

Karina Alma

Matt A. Barreto

Charlene Villaseñor Black

Maylei Blackwell

Floridalma Boj Lopez

Genevieve Carpio

Robert Chao Romero

Laura C. Chávez-Moreno

Jason De Leon

Alicia Gaspar de Alba

Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda

Gaye Theresa Johnson

Chris Zepeda-Millan