Category: Communique

Originally published by Underpaid at UT. Published in support of UC Student Workers UAW 2865 Santa Cruz

Underpaid at UT stands in solidarity with our graduate student colleagues at the University of California–Santa Cruz, who have been withholding grades and labor because UC refuses to pay a living wage. Students across the UC system are on strike, demanding COLAs—Cost of Living Adjustments—to keep up with the skyrocketing rents of California cities. We are appalled that UCSC has fired nearly 100 Teaching Assistants participating in grade and labor strikes. Major universities like UCSC have a responsibility to pay a living wage to the students they accept and recruit. Instead of addressing TAs’ reasonable demands and financial need, UCSC has taken away their only means of financial support. UC President Janet Napolitano is spending millions of dollars to maintain a police presence on campus to suppress the strikers, yet refuses to commit the same resources to supporting TAs.

Graduate student workers at the University of Texas at Austin are no strangers to the financial strain of making ends meet in an increasingly expensive city. We understand exactly why students across the UC system are risking everything to make their lives as graduate students livable. UCSC should be ashamed of its actions towards its graduate student workers and their supporters. Graduate school is already prohibitively expensive for many first-generation students, students from low-income households, and students of color who major universities supposedly devote many resources to recruiting. As long as universities like UCSC and UT Austin deny graduate students enough money to live, they reproduce inequities and exclusion by making themselves accessible only to a majority-white financial elite. The actions of graduate student workers at UCSC are part of a larger and critical battle for the relevance of universities and their ability to serve all students.

An Anonymous Submission

This week, job recruiters from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) will speak to students with disabilities and student veterans. According to the Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) website, CIA recruiters will offer informational sessions and one-on-one advisory sessions for interested applicants. Concerned students will wonder why the CIA is openly recruiting on a bustling college campus. In fact, colleges have become prime poaching grounds for federal agencies looking to bolster the surveillance state that is now commonplace in the so-called United States and beyond.

College campuses were once radical nerve centers that led disruptive actions against the Vietnam War and other atrocities. Post 9/11, they have been tamed by predatory organizations such as the CIA and the US military. Colleges feature a steady flow of international intellectuals, malleable minds, and relative anonymity. The intellectuals provide key information about the health and strength of rival states. Flexible and eager students, especially younger ones away from family for the first time, are vulnerable to manipulation by ruthlessly trained recruiters. And at a campus like UT Austin, a probing face in the crowd can do a lot of damage.

The presence of the state’s eyes and ears makes everyone less safe. Far from friendly, and even further from scrupulous, CIA agents are responsible for massive destabilization campaigns across the world. And under the vaunted liberal values of diversity and inclusion, the CIA is not only allowed but encouraged to recruit from various student communities, such as those receiving services from SSD. Apparently, they need more token members to prop up their reputation.

UT members concerned about autonomy and freedom from the state’s apparatus of surveillance and murder should be gravely concerned about the CIA’s presence on campus. It is up to us to send the message that feds and their ilk are NOT WELCOME in any capacity.

Editor’s note: The recruitment session described above will occur on September 27th in the Student Services Building.