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