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Squat Lesbian UC President Janet Napolitano Threatens Striking UCSC Grad Students with Mass Firing

In a dramatic escalation of University of California officials’ effort to break the UC Santa Cruz graduate student wildcat teaching strike, UC President Janet Napolitano has threatened scores of student teaching assistants and course instructors with “termination of existing employment at the University” if they do not submit grades they are withholding by this coming Friday, Feb. 21st.

Napolitano delivered the draconian and unprecedented ultimatum in a letter to UCSC faculty, staff, and students this past Friday. UCSC Executive Vice Chancellor Lori Kletzer likewise vowed in a Friday letter to UCSC faculty members that striking graduate students will be denied spring quarter employment if they do not turn in grades by Friday at 11:59 p.m., labeling her letter as "one final opportunity" for graduate students to submit to her administration's dictates.

The letters from Napolitano and Kletzer capped a dramatic first week of the wildcat teaching strike for a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). Striking grad students are demanding a $1,412 per month to bring them out of rent burden in one of the country’s most expensive real estate markets. Crowds of up to 800 people picketed both entrances to campus for 10 hours a day, Monday through Friday, shutting down the main entrance to campus for portions of every day. A militarized university police force arrested 17 students. The police inflicted serious injuries on at least three students, one of whom suffered blunt-force trauma and a likely concussion, as noted in a harrowing report by KQED.

The threats to fire graduate students is connected to an earlier, ongoing iteration of the wildcat strike. During the fall quarter, hundreds of UCSC graduate student TAs and instructors refused to submit grades until they receive a COLA. As of the beginning of the current school term, roughly 12,000 grades were missing. Graduate students’ decision to begin a full teaching strike last week came only after a UCSC administrator announced the beginning of disciplinary proceedings against those who allegedly participated in the grading strike. Napolitano’s threat to fire graduate students en masse is a provocative and unprecedented escalation of that earlier warning.

Given that many students are already unable to afford housing in Santa Cruz’s hyper-inflated rental market on their meager teaching salaries, the vast majority would simply be unable to continue their studies at UCSC. International students would lose their status as full-time students and have their visas revoked.

UCSC graduate student workers are defending themselves by calling for a mass mobilization on Tuesday at the picket lines at each entrance to campus. They are also calling for broad-based solidarity actions and work stoppages from other students and workers. Graduate students at other UC campuses, in particular, are mobilizing significant escalations of their own COLA campaigns in solidarity with their UCSC counterparts. An online solidarity petition from non-UCSC faculty members nationwide has already gathered more than 2,000 signatures since Saturday.

Collectively, UCSC's striking grad students are meeting Napolitano's repressive -- in which she seems to be reprising her previous role as Department of Homeland Security secretary, in which she presided over the deportation of hundreds of thousands of people -- with greater determination and solidarity than ever.

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by Anonymousreply 6February 19, 2020 12:06 AM

If tax payers won't support UC and CSU systems, what can be done? I don't blame the TAs, they are royally screwed.

by Anonymousreply 1February 18, 2020 11:16 PM

She's justified. It is a wildcat strike, i.e. blackmale.

by Anonymousreply 2February 18, 2020 11:25 PM

r2 Had to bring race and gender into it.

by Anonymousreply 3February 18, 2020 11:29 PM

Not as surprising as when squat lesbian Donna Shalala wouldn't negotiate with janitors. Both Napolitano and Shalala should rot in hell.

by Anonymousreply 4February 18, 2020 11:47 PM

"She's justified. It is a wildcat strike, i.e. blackmale."

Honey, THIS is a black male.

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by Anonymousreply 5February 19, 2020 12:02 AM

Are there any black males at UCSC. Isn't it white rasta boy central?

by Anonymousreply 6February 19, 2020 12:06 AM
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