UCSB 4 COLA took over Cheadle Hall Thursday morning as part of a UC-wide work-stoppage, blocking the doors to the building and refusing to let anyone into the building. After a brief confrontation with administration, graduate students moved inside, occupying every floor of the building.
This article will be updated with additional photos throughout the day. All photos by Max Abrams.
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“dusty rusty crusty musty ass california hills”
“frowning in plaid (haunted radios, bird bones + anthropomorphized wind)”
“warming my hands on bridges i’ve burnt”
“songs that make me see god”
“My Playlist #236”
“classy wine moment and intellectual conversation”
“90s heroin chic model off duty”
“tweet tweet bird emoji map emoji”
“not my circus, not my monkeys”
“a grave is probably cheaper than an apartment”
“ATE THESE BITCHES LEFT NO CRUMBS / DID IT IN DESIGNER PUMPS”
Wow. This is not the way to go about a strike or to get ANYONE on your side.
Exactly! Wrong move! But of course it’s all about what they want and screw everyone else. I refuse to support this strike because of their behavior. I am pushing for all of them to be fired!
Do y’all know the actual point of a strike?
They can protest what they please but they have no right to impede upon other’s right to enter a public building and block entrances.
They also have no right to stalk UC Staff and call them PIGS, because they work, or follow them to the bathroom and call them SCABS. Shame on you!!!
YESSS!!! They harassed staff terribly! Definitely not supporting these selfish jerks. They need to take their chants and shove it!
Those idiots don’t even know what a “scab” is! Nobody is replacing you in your job, geniuses! They’re trying to do their own job!
They have no right to harass, scream, yell and intimidate innocent people who also need to make a living to support their own families. Take your temper tantrums elsewhere!
“oh no! student workers who can’t afford housing and food disrupted a workplace for a couple of hours??!” quit pretending you ever would have supported the strike or the precarious workers who keep this university running.
They didn’t just “disrupt”. They screamed at and harassed staff relentlessly. If you or I did this in public, we’d be arrested for disturbing the peace. And yet these little jerks get off scott free!
HA “keep this university running?” What a joke. There are a good many others who do exactly that job without being a nuisance.
“F**k the UC and the bi**h named Janet” Real class folks. No wonder why so many working Californians have turned against UC students.
Ok boomer
Ahhhh yes. When you don’t have a good reply, just discredit their validity as a person that can have an opinion. Dehumanize those who disagree with you. Remember! Some are more equal than others.
That’s the best you can do? OK boomer. Sorry, little boy, I am 46.
The little turds of today have no idea what a Boomer is… I’ve seen it thrown around at people as young as 30 when that person don’t agree with them. That’s their only come back from their tantrums.
I’m sure even if they were more “polite”, you still would be policing their respectability. Strikes are not about being polite.
This is exactly why my company refuses to interview UC grads.
Probably for the best.
Maybe folks are policing the strikers’ misogyny. Cultivating sympathy is as important as communicating outrage. Surely there are better ways to accomplish both than calling Janet a *****, etc.. Call upon the cola movement to disavow misogynistic sloganeering.
I support the strike, but I do agree with this- misogynistic language has no place in our movement. I’ve heard a lot of those in the movement express concern over this. However, I don’t think that unfortunate word choices should be used to justify dismissing the entire movement.
The photo of the banner “F*** the UC and a b****named Janet” has now been on the front page of the Daily Nexus for three days. It is not merely an “unfortunate word choice.” This was the banner the movement chose to display in the most symbolic place of all: the front of Cheadle Hall. Take responsibility for the movement culture you are creating and insist more forcefully on what must be changed.
It’s not like individual banners are voted on by the several thousand grad students who were marching that day. The individuals who were at Cheadle made that banner- there are what, 6 people holding it? Out of several thousand that are a part of the larger movement. Individuals make their own banners and take them to the strike. How is anyone supposed to perfectly regulate something like this?
Fair or not, the Daily Nexus has made this the dominant image of the strike. Hard to control individual placards for sure. But the major banner in front of Cheadle?
Definitely in bad taste. Future employers, think twice before hiring a UCSB grad student.
Sadly, this has been happening for a while. I worked at several places that if they hired students straight out of college, they preferred students from Cal State universities because they often have immediately useful work experience which is often part of their curriculum before they graduate. Many UC grads compared to their Cal State peers, were often clueless about the real world and how to do basic things like writing formal letters. They also often behaved entitled as though the task assigned to them was “below” them. I’ve seen several of them come and go and become replaced with… Read more »
#COLA #hypocrites
These agitators are aggressive and are looking for a fight. Probably want to provoke and record some sort of altercation with police or staff that they can post online and make themselves look like “victims.”
Not true. Years ago, undergrad students went on strike (not sure what the subject was) and occupied Cheadle as well. A friend of mine working there at the time said that they were respectful and pleasant, working on their own laptops even though they were camped out in the lobbies. How you make other people feel matters! And they will always remember it!
Figures. The undergrads that these people claim to teach have more sense and respect and behave more like adults than them.
UC Graduate Students are CALIFORNIA WORKERS TOO. THEY ARE TASKED WITH TEACHING YOUR CHILDREN AND SHOULD BE PAID A LIVING WAGE.
We should stop giving them free tuition and then give them what they’re asking for out of that money. Maybe then you’ll realize how fucking good you have it compared to graduate students across the rest of the country.
They don’t have free tuition…
They literally get full tuition remission… do you even go here?
Yes, they do.
Grad school is not like undergrad. Often grad/PHD students don’t take classes in the same way that undergrads do. Hell, in some programs, for most of their time they aren’t taking classes at all (and instead doing research in labs, for instance)- and yet they are still “charged” tuition. So they’re getting “waived” for something that they really shouldn’t be charged for in the first place. Grad programs at research universities differ from those at, say, a small liberal arts college. You are expected to perform considerable labor and research FOR the university, in addition to “your” research that is… Read more »
Absurd. Graduate students are also students and are considered so until they earn their degree and the appropriate skills of their field. The institution of graduate students was such that it was a mentorship of a few selected individuals who were taken under the wing of professors. Work done as part of their learning is just that, learning. Don’t be mistaken, graduate students are there to learn and have requisites for the degree to fill and are charged tuition just like undergraduate students who are there to learn, which if you have a good advisor, will find funding to cover… Read more »
Being a TA is not a part of their education (i.e. their degree requirements) – it is a JOB that they are doing for the university in addition to classes, research, etc. that actually count towards their degree. These requisites for degree completion go beyond just taking classes like it is for undergrads. The sad reality is that TAs now do much of the real work of teaching undergrads- it’s worryingly common for undergrads to barely see or communicate with their actual professors. Grading, office hours, fielding student questions/concerns, lecturing and leading discussion sections, not to mention learning and mastering… Read more »
It sounds like then the system should work as is but the professors push their work on to the grad students.
The university is a non-profit institution.
Now do AB5.
Who the hell would want their children taught by these entitled, selfish, “UC Grads”? REMINDER TO UC GRADS ON STRIKE!!! YOU DECIDED TO GO THERE. NOBODY FORCED YOU! IF YOU DON’T LIKE WHAT YOU HAVE, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE!… OR MAYBE NOBODY ELSE WANTED YOU???
BINGO!!! Since when was a PhD a right? It’s NOT! It’s a PRIVILEGE that the majority of people don’t or can’t get!
They’re actually in training–faculty are tasked with teaching your children, and by the way, they have very high rent burdens too.
Also, nobody has pointed out that the TAs are STILL GETTING PAID BY THE UNIVERSITY WHILE ON STRIKE….this is not a strike, it’s just entitled children holding their hands out for a payoff. Take a ride in working class Socal neighborhoods if you want to see exploitation and social injustice. What a joke.
Yes, they’ve been paid for the rest of the quarter, and yet THEY are doing everything they can to prevent staff from working! Staff need to earn a living too, and THEY’RE NOT PAID UPFRONT!
They’re cloistered in their own little bubbles pretending they know everything about the world. They have no clue.
How about you step out of your sheltered university bubble and see how EVERYONE is burdened by high rent and don’t ask for free handouts and instead find ways to EARN it? Nobody forced you to invest in a higher degree it’s a privilege, not a right. Get out of those diapers and into the real world and make yourself useful to society instead of whining about demanding more taxpayer dollars for doing nothing worth benefitting society but lining your own ego so you can flaunt your degree while working a mediocre job because surprise, in the real world employers… Read more »
Who got stuck in traffic due to them taking over the Henley Gate entrance today?
Demanding a raise that will cost the University $65 million, and at the same time demanding that the University not raise fees to pay for it? These grad students believe in unicorns and pixie dust. Frightening that this is the level of intellectual rigor … and more frightening that UCSB will probably bestow doctorates on most of these geniuses.
UCLA just raised 3 billion dollars through fundraising, and Berkeley is on pace to raise 6B by 2022. The money exists in the system, it just needs to be reallocated away from the inflated salaries of administrators.
Ah, the ever ready magic wand of citing inflated salaries of administrators, when you actually haven’t a clue about how to pay for it.
The way was explained. Re-allocate funds. Also, it stands to reason that by paying workers more those workers will be able to contribute more to the overall economy. The UC is a huge employer, and they create revenue like a business. They should pay all their workers a living wage. Then again, I’m probably having this argument with somebody who believes in the wonder of “trickle-down economics.” There is no reason that hundreds of admins should make 10-20x the amount as graduate students, researchers, staff, lecturers, or faculty.
you are partly correct but grad students are not full time employees and already get their tuition. The demands are absurd
And so, I take it that your plan is to cut $65 million worth of administrative salaries and benefits expense, in order to generate the funds to give graduate students, both employees and non-employees, the $1,800 per month “COLA”? Is this your plan? You’re proposing massive faculty and staff terminations, totalling $65 million, to do this.
Agreed. Considering the fact that faculty and staff generally live in the local area, terminating them will have a greater negative effect on the regional economy. Grad students are only here temporarily, and then most of them leave for other opportunities. Their impact on the local economy is much lower than faculty and staff. In fact, if they all left, the rest of us would probably be able to afford housing ourselves!
A lot of the time, donors have a say in where the money gets allocated. You can’t assume it’s all free to spend for any use.
Not sure where you’re getting the 65mil figure from, but just to put things into perspective, the University of California system contributes more than $46 BILLION yearly to the state’s economy. It’s the 3rd largest employer in the state. They can come up with that kind of money to invest in the people who do most of the actual teaching in the classroom.
When you say, “actual teaching,” you mean the grading, follow-up, and supplemental aid in addition to the TEACHING the professors do. The nerve…
No, I also mean leading discussion sections (where, in many cases, TAs have to come up with material themselves), where students are actually communicated with directly, and where much actual mastery and comprehension of the material takes place, in addition to holding office hours, where individual student mentorship, not to mention the emotional labor of dealing with students mental health, personal issues, and struggles with the material and with boosting their grades also takes place. TAs have to take on a much more engaged role with students at this point than professors in these classes. There are obviously incredible, engaged… Read more »
Yeah but what they mean it’s arrogant of you to call what you do, “actual teaching,” as though to suggest what the professors do isn’t. Can you imagine being talked about this way if you went through what you went through to get your degree and find your TA talking this way? It’s just disrespectful and could have been better put.
Yes, it should have been better worded, and I apologize for that. Like I went on to say, there are incredible professors who are passionate about, and dedicated teachers. I was more talking about those scenarios where, as I said “professors who don’t do much more in these courses, teaching-wise, than lecture the same pre-made lectures they’ve been using for years (decades, even) for a few hours a week, leave, and use their TAs as human shields to protect them from actually having to deal with students,” which academia is unfortunately rife with. Undergrad supporters of the COLA movement have… Read more »
That’s part of the training. Faculty only require TAs for one fourth of their teaching load, namely lower-division intro courses. For the rest, they do all the “actual teaching” themselves. I’m faculty at UC and I personally believe sections are a royal waste of time. I make mine optional. The university is doing you a favor by giving grad students the opportunity to learn how to teach in a classroom setting; TAs should be paying for that privilege. Try getting a tenure-track job with no teaching experience. This entire setup exists for the sole purpose of benefiting the grad students… Read more »
Seriously, you’re saying that TAs should be PAYING for the “privilege” of working as teaching assistants, so, what, they can graduate and go on to adjunct for peanuts with no benefits and very little hope of getting tenure track? Get a clue. Whatever value you actually see in their labor, I think it’s undeniable that they are doing a job that has real monetary value to the university, if just by doing the grunt work that faculty doesn’t want to. It’s still labor, even if you want to call it “training” which, as in any other industry, still is paid.… Read more »
People who go to law school, med school, trade schools, who get MBAs etc., pay (and take out loans to do so). What TAs do is student work, which is indeed work, but legally very different from wage labor. The University generously sets it up so that TAs get some pay for their training-work and TAs should be aware of that. UCSB is not a nonprofit institutions, so it’s not like fat cats are hoarding all the money and intentionally depriving grad students. Staff, lecturers, and faculty, as well as administrators, make less money than they would elsewhere, and everyone–or… Read more »
People who go to law school, med school, trade schools, etc. don’t work as unpaid instructors at the schools that they attend. Med students get paid for doing residencies, which is “student work” and their “training” for their field. The work that TAs do is separate from their degree- they may sign up for them in GOLD, but those hours don’t actually count towards their degree progress. So, it’s a completely extraneous job that they’re doing to help pay for their degree, but to say that they’re just “being paid to go to school” and doing “student work” separate from… Read more »
Sounds like an easy fix. This sounds great! Then you should get paid an hourly rate with fixed work hours commensurate to your experience and the service you provide. The tuition which was paid on your behalf by another entity or source of funds which your university found for you, you can be responsible for, just like the undergrads and the med students you mentioned. In fact, nix that because the work experience gained by serving as teaching assistant which you were once able to place as experience on your resume upon graduating, this experience is “extraneous” as you say… Read more »
Wow. You’re in for a surprise when you leave the university bubble and enter the real world. If anyone is willing to hire you, that is, with that attitude.
Yes indeed, they can come up with the money … by raising tuition. If you think there’s another way, you believe in unicorns and pixie dust.
$1,800 per month X 3000 grad students X 12 months = +/- $65 million. The activitists are demanding that the $1,800/mo not be limited only to TA’s, but must go to all grad students regardless of whether they work for the University. Further they demand that it not be allocated based on a needs test. This demand is in addition to the demand that it not come from a fee increase.
Nope, they demand free money for all, manna from heaven. Don’t we all, but some of us live in the real world.
It’s pretty simple math: they are demanding $1800 (I rounded down) per month for each of about 3000 graduate students. $1800 times 12 months times 3000 students
You said it! They’ll just give them degrees to get the hell out there!
Forget the degrees, they should all be fired!
From a proud member of the “Cheadle 57” (UCSB 1982): Solidarity to the students occupying Cheadle Hall!!
Already forgotten to time
Yep, they all become irrelevant eventually.