Speaker 1: Hello, Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast which
Speaker 1: only has one button and is edited by Danil using
Speaker 1: a ten year old Logitech Expots controller. That's a submarine
Speaker 1: joke for those of you who who have not been
Speaker 1: following today, I'm joined by Alex and Tom, both of
Speaker 1: them graduate students in the UC system, and we're talking
Speaker 1: about this really obscene charge of assault that some graduate
Speaker 1: students are facing after they disrupted.
Speaker 2: An alumni event in San Diego.
Speaker 1: Hi, Alex and Tom, if you had to introduce yourselves
Speaker 1: a little bit, as far as you feel comfortable.
Speaker 3: Hi, Jens, sure, thanks for having us back. My name
Speaker 3: is Alex. I'm a graduate student at University of California,
Speaker 3: San Diego. Some of you have been listening since November.
Speaker 3: My remember when I first came on the show to
Speaker 3: tell you about our strike. And I guess we're going
Speaker 3: to give some some interesting updates since then.
Speaker 4: And I'm also graduate student at UC San Diego, and
Speaker 4: I'm pretty managed in my program. I've been here for
Speaker 4: a while and I can manage, which very cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so I think to start out with we
Speaker 1: should just explain, Well, we'll explain what happened in detail,
Speaker 1: at the event in a bit, But can you just
Speaker 1: explain what these charges that people are facing are and
Speaker 1: how they found out that they have been charged with
Speaker 1: assault after doing something which was not violent in the
Speaker 1: first place.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, So the most sort of recent thing that's
Speaker 3: happened is is and we'll talk about the details in
Speaker 3: a moment, But as James alluded to, we held a
Speaker 3: peaceful protest back in May related to a number of
Speaker 3: violations of our most recent collective bargaining agreement, which I'll
Speaker 3: also be happy to go into detail on. And in
Speaker 3: response to what was, by all accounts, by what I
Speaker 3: witnessed by everyone else that I've talked to, was a
Speaker 3: completely peaceful protest, the university has decided to allege that
Speaker 3: sixty seven graduate students, including by our account eighteen who
Speaker 3: were either not present or not involved, are going to
Speaker 3: be charged under the student conduct process with committing a
Speaker 3: physical assault, as well as charges for disruption and a
Speaker 3: vague assertion that we were threatening the health and safety
Speaker 3: of others. These are quite serious allegations. They do carry
Speaker 3: potential sanctions up to long term suspension and expulsion from
Speaker 3: the university, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's I think people like the exposure for
Speaker 1: graduate students is so high, right, Like, if you are
Speaker 1: on the job market, you know that this could set
Speaker 1: back your progress.
Speaker 2: Already very challenging job market.
Speaker 1: It's suspension or expulsion presumably could have long term consequences
Speaker 1: for employability and something that like I think I spent
Speaker 1: the better part of eight years at u c SDN.
Speaker 1: Say you've invested a lot of time, you get paid
Speaker 1: like shit, and if you then get nothing out of it,
Speaker 1: that is potentially devastating for.
Speaker 4: Each individual illness. This is absolutely never staying. These are
Speaker 4: careers and invested, you know, a minimum of seven years
Speaker 4: at least, humanities find there's so many of us more.
Speaker 4: But it's also never sailing for the university itself because
Speaker 4: these students that are being charged by from virtually having program,
Speaker 4: so many of them are working in very prestigious, high
Speaker 4: powered laboratories, have you know, fellowships and scholarships. So this
Speaker 4: is really a bad look for the university as well
Speaker 4: to you know, potentially have sixty seven graduate students under
Speaker 4: these charges.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally sixty seven. It's funny, I've been sixty eight.
Speaker 1: We could have It's when I like, I don't know
Speaker 1: when I hear sixty obviously, I think of like nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight, and it's remarkable. This is a university at
Speaker 1: one point somewhat self immolated at UCSD in protest Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: and now we are like I had a reputation for radicalism,
Speaker 1: and now who we are charging people for walking onto
Speaker 1: a stage and shouting. Do you want to talk about
Speaker 1: that they're walking onto a stage and shouting? Can you
Speaker 1: maybe give us an account of the events and then
Speaker 1: we'll talk about maybe how those have been represented in
Speaker 1: the process.
Speaker 2: That makes sense, Yeah, sure.
Speaker 3: So this particular protest took place at an awards ceremony,
Speaker 3: very sort of fancy sort of annual events that the
Speaker 3: university hosts where they give awards to various alumni and
Speaker 3: kind of as a sort of fundraising opportunity as well.
Speaker 3: And what the protest took the form of was that
Speaker 3: a number of graduate student workers walked on stage uninvited
Speaker 3: and began giving speeches and holding signs demonstrating the ways
Speaker 3: in which and informing the audience of the ways in
Speaker 3: which that our contracts have not been upheld since we
Speaker 3: signed them in December, the ways in which the university
Speaker 3: is circumventing some of the raises that we were promised
Speaker 3: for our research and teaching, and the ways it is
Speaker 3: trying to sort of prevent those things from being resolved
Speaker 3: in the sort of normal channels that you go through
Speaker 3: with these sort of these sort of union and contract
Speaker 3: administration things. And that's been I'm gooing for I suppose
Speaker 3: six months now with relatively little process. So that demonstration
Speaker 3: took place about up until the time that some local
Speaker 3: police officers arrived, and at that time the demonstration was
Speaker 3: fully compliant with those orders, and the police officers noted
Speaker 3: such in their dispatch logs, which I was able to
Speaker 3: retrieve from the city. And then after that the demonstration
Speaker 3: continued outside of the venue of the event, where people
Speaker 3: were still able to you know, make a decent amount
Speaker 3: of noise and raise their grievances despite the walls separating
Speaker 3: the group from the alumni inside. And it certainly did
Speaker 3: get some attention, since we were in touch after that
Speaker 3: with people who were sort of relatively high up in
Speaker 3: a number of university and alumni centric offices and who
Speaker 3: were surprised to hear of the things that we were
Speaker 3: alleging and wanted to hear more and be able to
Speaker 3: raise those issues further uper of the university. So these
Speaker 3: charges certainly did sort of come as a shock, given
Speaker 3: that at first a lot of people at the event
Speaker 3: seemed receptive in a way, though certainly not all, but
Speaker 3: some were certainly receptive to our concerns and what we
Speaker 3: had to say.
Speaker 4: A lot a couple of interesting details. And the first
Speaker 4: one that the immediate in participate in this event was
Speaker 4: actually the news that Chancellor Britty Coles Law was in attendance,
Speaker 4: and this was only a week or two after they
Speaker 4: become public knowledge that he had received a five hundred
Speaker 4: thousand dollars arrays as an effort to keep him in
Speaker 4: the university, which raises his salary to more than a
Speaker 4: million dollars and I think makes him the fourth highest
Speaker 4: paid university chancellor or president in the United States. So
Speaker 4: we presented him within award for UCSD's most overpaid works,
Speaker 4: and that was sort of our rationale before doing this
Speaker 4: specific event. And the other thing is is that when
Speaker 4: the police arrived, they actually did no verbal orders for
Speaker 4: us to clear out. We as soon as we saw them,
Speaker 4: we peacefully started to leave the stage and they stood
Speaker 4: there as well. Their arrests were made, now interviews, no
Speaker 4: orders were shouted. They remained on site for the duration
Speaker 4: as we stood outside picking. There were no reinforcements, there
Speaker 4: were no swat teams, and we've just one or two
Speaker 4: squad cars. The police typically are known for having outsized
Speaker 4: responses to minor problems, but the fact that they did
Speaker 4: not have any kind of aggressive response to this indicate
Speaker 4: to us that they were where it was entirely peaceful events.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the dispatch logs don't show them having any
Speaker 1: concerns about violence or responding to to any like real violence,
Speaker 1: them seeing any violence responding to it, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was able to grab those and the Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's difficult to say because it looks like maybe two
Speaker 3: people called nine on one even though.
Speaker 4: It was three.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Violence, Yeah, two said there was no violence. That third
Speaker 3: person said they had secondhand reports that we had pushed
Speaker 3: the chancellor off the stage, which we have video of
Speaker 3: that very definitely not happening. He stood next to the
Speaker 3: graduate students and then of his own initiative, turned and
Speaker 3: walked off the stage. So the only allegation that's documented
Speaker 3: in real time of any violence occurring was one admittedly secondhand,
Speaker 3: and two is disproven conclusively by the available video.
Speaker 1: Right, and that video is online right, like it's been posted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's easy to find.
Speaker 3: There's that particular one that really easily disproves it. There's
Speaker 3: a video link for the union uploaded it, so I
Speaker 3: can we can drop that in the show notes. I
Speaker 3: can send that too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, excellent, We'll make sure we do that.
Speaker 1: And likewise, the p R that this publicly available, folks
Speaker 1: could go see it as pras are publicly available. We
Speaker 1: have like a lot of evidence that no one was
Speaker 1: find that the assaulted. What is the university alleging that
Speaker 1: was done? I guess that they claiming what do they
Speaker 1: claim the student workers did?
Speaker 3: Well? The closest thing that we can find, so in
Speaker 3: a you know, in the documentation that each person was
Speaker 3: given about the charges that they face, the closest thing
Speaker 3: we can find to a description that seems to imply
Speaker 3: assault was that someone claimed to have seen the chancellor.
Speaker 3: The word they use was bumped, which doesn't even necessarily
Speaker 3: imply intentionality in my mind. And really the way that
Speaker 3: I read that sentence is that you know, possibly the
Speaker 3: stage was a little crowded and someone might have bumped
Speaker 3: into him. But I don't even recall ever seeing that happen.
Speaker 3: I haven't talked to anyone who recalls seeing that happen,
Speaker 3: anyone who was in our group or not. But other
Speaker 3: than that, the rest of the report is really just
Speaker 3: full of descriptions of how they they have I don't
Speaker 3: even think they talked to anyone who said they were
Speaker 3: scared of us. They just said people might have been
Speaker 3: scared of us. It's very strange.
Speaker 4: The report reads like propaganda from the class, or it's
Speaker 4: cuestioning of the highest order. If some Champagne glasses were
Speaker 4: builken the events of South Class one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 4: to set up with many different caterers and vendors. Somebody
Speaker 4: flew all the way from Switzerland for the event and
Speaker 4: actually made us from the report, you know, during the
Speaker 4: event itself, because I was, as you know, a determinate
Speaker 4: out of other magic students, and we actually were assaulted
Speaker 4: by members of the crowd who would come up and
Speaker 4: put their arms on their hands on our shoulders and
Speaker 4: hor us. This is why people hate unions. And you know, hey,
Speaker 4: I brought my my nine year old grandmother to this
Speaker 4: and I have some you know, fifty million dollars ranch
Speaker 4: and I'm being honored for this, but people pumping my trust,
Speaker 4: people thumping other people's says, sticking fingers in our faces
Speaker 4: and telling us, really that we ruined their special night.
Speaker 4: And our response was, you know, I think that our
Speaker 4: need to pay rent and feed ourselves is a little
Speaker 4: bit more important than on your special night at the
Speaker 4: the Art Museum by the ocean with the bosses of Champagne.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's not like it was even a like
Speaker 1: all those happening was that people who had given them
Speaker 1: money or who they want them to, who do they
Speaker 1: want to get money from, were being made to feel special.
Speaker 1: It wasn't as if you even interrupted like a like
Speaker 1: a meeting or a function of the university. And unless
Speaker 1: we consider the function of the university these days, seems
Speaker 1: to be to get money and then distribute it to
Speaker 1: people in positions of power in the university. So given
Speaker 1: that right that this was an event, I guess which
Speaker 1: reinforced the people who have authority in the university. It's
Speaker 1: interesting to look what's not interesting, it's upsetting to look
Speaker 1: at the nature of the process that these sixty seven
Speaker 1: people are facing right, because it's not They're not being
Speaker 1: accused in a court of doing a crime. They're being
Speaker 1: accused by the university, in the university of breaking the
Speaker 1: conduct rules of the university. So the university is like,
Speaker 1: it's all parties apart from the defendant. Right, it's a judge,
Speaker 1: it's a jury, it's a prosecuting lawyer and the executioner.
Speaker 2: So can you yeah, go ahead, I'll.
Speaker 4: Just say something about that. You know that this was
Speaker 4: very much related on the part of the university to
Speaker 4: charge us as as under the student conduct violation, because
Speaker 4: if they're charging us as students, they're not charging us
Speaker 4: as workers. If we have workers, we would have getting
Speaker 4: representation in our meetings, it would be part of that
Speaker 4: litigation process. But as students, the context of the labor
Speaker 4: fight that is the result altare for the entire event
Speaker 4: is relevant that it can be divorced from that and
Speaker 4: treated under You know, the music coades that are meant
Speaker 4: to charge undergraduates who are drinking in their terms or
Speaker 4: are sexually harassing their peers in their classes is not
Speaker 4: something that is in my view appropriate at all to
Speaker 4: apply to a labor dispute, which is what this was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, I think the only time I've been party
Speaker 1: to these proceedings is when Anne the graduate did physically
Speaker 1: assault someone who I was teaching with. But it's not
Speaker 1: a normal procedure by any means, and certainly to use
Speaker 1: against grad students are very clearly taking part in a
Speaker 1: labor action. I think it's very telling that the university
Speaker 1: is kind of using one system to circumvent the fair
Speaker 1: bargaining and the unfair labor practices and all the things
Speaker 1: that they seem really like, they seem almost like inexplicably
Speaker 1: committed to not sticking to the contract, even though they
Speaker 1: got a contract that was largely favorable to them and
Speaker 1: not as much as people had wanted at the start
Speaker 1: of the strike. So how does it work from here? Like,
Speaker 1: what does this process look like?
Speaker 3: Well, to start with, each of us has an individual
Speaker 3: meeting with a representative of the university, and at that meeting,
Speaker 3: we essentially have the response the option to either accept
Speaker 3: responsibility for all the charges against us, or to say
Speaker 3: that we do not accept that responsibility and want to
Speaker 3: continue the process forward, at which point they will they
Speaker 3: will schedule or attempt to schedule a conduct review Board meeting,
Speaker 3: where I believe three representatives from who have been sort
Speaker 3: of predetermined to serve on these conduct review boards will
Speaker 3: judge the weight of the evidence in a preponderance of
Speaker 3: the evidence standard, and at that point then the Office
Speaker 3: of Student Conduct, if you are found responsible. I believe
Speaker 3: that office is then what decides what the sanctions are
Speaker 3: that you will face. So this is a bit of
Speaker 3: an unprecedented process, at least for us we actually, I believe,
Speaker 3: and I want to clarify some numbers. I think I
Speaker 3: said sixty seven graduate students earlier, they were actually fifty
Speaker 3: nine from this event who were charged, and that sixty
Speaker 3: seven comes from a to who were charged for a
Speaker 3: protest related to the university's attempt to fire workers for striking,
Speaker 3: which is still ongoing. That protest took place in January,
Speaker 3: and there that conduct process for those eight workers has
Speaker 3: not yet resolved as we speak today on June twentieth,
Speaker 3: So it's not clear how they are going to manage
Speaker 3: the logistics of trying to charge six fifty nine workers
Speaker 3: in a single case. It could, assuming they follow their
Speaker 3: entire procedures by the book and don't dismiss any charges,
Speaker 3: it could take more than a year to resolve the
Speaker 3: situation Jesus.
Speaker 1: And for people who have like they're either defending or
Speaker 1: advancing to candidacy or these are all things you can
Speaker 1: do within grad school people who aren't familiar where you
Speaker 1: sort of level up your grad student status.
Speaker 2: I guess are people able to do that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Luckily this does not restrict your academic advancement. It
Speaker 3: can potentially if it goes from quarter to quarter, they
Speaker 3: can potentially put I believe, holds on registration. But I
Speaker 3: think that's only if you don't sort of carry out
Speaker 3: your sanctions, assuming your sanction is not suspension. I could
Speaker 3: be a time correct if I'm wrong on that. But
Speaker 3: what still could be the case is that you could
Speaker 3: you know, and could well be the case for me
Speaker 3: that I defend before the conclusion of this process. But
Speaker 3: it could still end up as something that would be
Speaker 3: on a contact record that could be released in certain
Speaker 3: employment situations. So even if you are able to escape
Speaker 3: the process, so to speak, it is not necessarily not
Speaker 3: going to follow you after that point.
Speaker 4: By all indicators who already at their first meeting, masking
Speaker 4: or exact responsibility of course states that no, we die
Speaker 4: foundations against us, But it seems as if the the
Speaker 4: of student conduct is quite over problems. By this, people
Speaker 4: have been trying to schedule a meeting to have not
Speaker 4: gotten responses from the office.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: The office then gets back to them a week or
Speaker 4: two later with you know, only one or two options.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: The the really calculated evil of this is it means
Speaker 4: charge is dropped on the very last day of the quarter,
Speaker 4: which means that at least in the Arts and Humanities,
Speaker 4: most of us are going out of town or are
Speaker 4: conducting research or are on fellowships, so we're not around
Speaker 4: to respond to these. And I think that that was
Speaker 4: a decision that was purposefully made. But you know, to
Speaker 4: to process this a hue number of students involved in
Speaker 4: this is staggering, and I think that the office, a
Speaker 4: lot of the offices are really struggling. The other thing
Speaker 4: that I will say is we have it from the
Speaker 4: informal channels that this is something that is being directed
Speaker 4: from the very top, which is the same from the chancellor.
Speaker 4: This is not something that infacial observers, you know, made
Speaker 4: of something that the chancellor himself is directing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, give me a chance it
Speaker 1: was there. It also like it's just put me in
Speaker 1: mind of twenty ten, when I don't think either of
Speaker 1: you were at UCSD, but for those of us who were,
Speaker 1: and there's a film about it actually called Dear White People,
Speaker 1: But there was a party where people wore black face,
Speaker 1: and this happened I think through a fraternity that was
Speaker 1: associated with the university, and getting the university to do
Speaker 1: anything disciplinary about that required hundreds off not thousands of
Speaker 1: people to go on strike, to march, to occupy the
Speaker 1: Chancellor's complex, and to like physically demand action for weeks
Speaker 1: and weeks if not months from the Chancellor's system, right like,
Speaker 1: and still it was an extremely unsatisfactory process. The resolution
Speaker 1: was with extremely unsatisfactory. But I guess that.
Speaker 4: There's a contemporaneous incident happening right now. I don't know
Speaker 4: all the details, but it appears to be an individual
Speaker 4: was a video or videos himself progressing a screening with
Speaker 4: his professor on it and making new comments and a
Speaker 4: whole variety of really missosialistic, quldly behavior. Apparently this is
Speaker 4: this is stored to restraining or that he's received. But
Speaker 4: as as universe is concerned, this is still a case
Speaker 4: that's that's moving through it and it doesn't appear to
Speaker 4: have had any immediate sanctions. We've heard stories of sexual assaults,
Speaker 4: as you said, of racist harassment that I really don't know,
Speaker 4: actually reported the student last summer for very threatening behavior
Speaker 4: and the very much square english in my flash.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's it's yeah. The only thing that sort
Speaker 1: of they jump to defend is capital, I guess, or
Speaker 1: in this case the sort of administrators of the university.
Speaker 1: And so this this could potentially play out for months.
Speaker 1: What's the and it seems like everyone has accepting responsibility
Speaker 1: such a strange word, because like, what's what happened is
Speaker 1: what's a question really not who's responsible for it?
Speaker 2: So much?
Speaker 1: Right, Like you can accept responsibility for doing what was
Speaker 1: a protected First Amendment activity, but like you obviously can't
Speaker 1: accept responsibility for assault.
Speaker 2: If you didn't assault somebody. But given that no one.
Speaker 4: If sixty seven students had assaulting transor of you would
Speaker 4: think that.
Speaker 3: National Yeah, that would have been yeah, that would have
Speaker 3: been something I think, yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: Like a beat down. But that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: So what's the plan for defense, I guess is each case,
Speaker 1: like an individual case, can they mount Can people mount
Speaker 1: a joint defense like the j twenty one people did
Speaker 1: in DC. Do we know yet, how does this work?
Speaker 3: I'm not sure we entirely know yet. I think the
Speaker 3: university can make the decision to consolidate cases that share evidence.
Speaker 3: I don't believe they've made that determination yet. I think
Speaker 3: what they are trying to do now, and this sort
Speaker 3: of leads into another part that I think represents a
Speaker 3: degree of sort of apathy, border on bordering on cruelty
Speaker 3: of this process is that we've identified at least eighteen
Speaker 3: graduate students who were either not physically present at all
Speaker 3: or had merely registered for the event without even knowing
Speaker 3: that this would take place, and those people have all
Speaker 3: been charged with these ect same things that everyone who
Speaker 3: was intentionally part of the protest has been. So we
Speaker 3: think that we're ath the individual stage where they are
Speaker 3: trying to kind of they know that they have They're
Speaker 3: well aware that they caught a bunch of people that
Speaker 3: had no involvement in this. But we think that we're
Speaker 3: using really these individual meetings to figure out who those
Speaker 3: people are to the best of their ability, and perhaps
Speaker 3: further down the line, they may decide to try to
Speaker 3: consolidate these cases to expedite the process, but it's hard
Speaker 3: to say for sure. The again, this the important aspect
Speaker 3: of this process is the fact that almost every element
Speaker 3: of it, in every step and how that is carried out,
Speaker 3: is entirely at the discretion of a handful of university administrators.
Speaker 3: There's no real appeal outside of the system, there's no
Speaker 3: real accountability outside of the system, so they can simply
Speaker 3: implement these things, you know, as as they see fit.
Speaker 2: I mean this. There was.
Speaker 3: H when this eventually first broke There were some former
Speaker 3: graduate students who run on an old radical uc Twitter
Speaker 3: account who shared some write ups from cases of sit
Speaker 3: ins that were charged under the same process, I believe
Speaker 3: at Berkeley a couple of years ago, and in that
Speaker 3: one the administrators at the Berkeley campus actually went as
Speaker 3: far as to edit the code of conduct during the process.
Speaker 1: Surely you're not responsible for like X post factor edits
Speaker 1: of the code of conduct or were they.
Speaker 3: They were, well, this was primarily in you know, in
Speaker 3: all fairness, if they deserve any of this was that
Speaker 3: particular incident was kind of a logistical thing. So it
Speaker 3: was it was whether or not certain aspects of the
Speaker 3: process could be waived or could be could be extended.
Speaker 3: The deadline could be extended, and someone who didn't have
Speaker 3: the authority to extend it did And when they were
Speaker 3: called on that, they edited the code of conduct after
Speaker 3: the fact to say that, okay, designee can extend the
Speaker 3: deadline for you know, how this process proceeds. So it
Speaker 3: wasn't that they invented a rule to charge someone under
Speaker 3: but they did edit their own due processes.
Speaker 1: They went at wat right, Yeah, so you you might
Speaker 1: be up against the moving target, so to speak. Did
Speaker 1: they identify everybody like did because I'm presuming people didn't
Speaker 1: use their legal names to register or like, how were
Speaker 1: they able to identify some of the people to clearly
Speaker 1: the people who were just there as undergraduate alumni and
Speaker 1: happened to be graduate students probably did use their real names.
Speaker 2: But do you know how else said in five people, Well.
Speaker 3: I think they did. You know some people did. I
Speaker 3: assume that I was taught you with my real name
Speaker 3: on the registration and that was simply because I, you know,
Speaker 3: some some people decided to use different names. I decided,
Speaker 3: after weighing the frozen cons that I decided that it
Speaker 3: was you know, I figured that there might be it
Speaker 3: might be a worse situation if that was, you know, unraveled,
Speaker 3: and I didn't think that. Obviously, I had no plans
Speaker 3: of assaulting someone, and I did not assault anyone, so
Speaker 3: I had no reason to expect that perhaps I needed
Speaker 3: to take that level of precaution with this kind of
Speaker 3: a peaceful protest action. But we believe that they primarily
Speaker 3: got the names of who did who who they'd decided
Speaker 3: to charge from simply registration lists. But again the fact
Speaker 3: and there was a sign in at this event where
Speaker 3: you picked up a name tag, and you know, it
Speaker 3: was kind of a gate. You couldn't really get in
Speaker 3: without doing that. But they still gave charges to people
Speaker 3: who actually, we know for a fact were not physically
Speaker 3: present and have been able to prove that they were
Speaker 3: not physically present. So it doesn't seem that they even
Speaker 3: bothered to consult, at least initially, the actual signing list
Speaker 3: of people who actually showed up and checked in, which
Speaker 3: is also a bit strange. But yeah, it seems to
Speaker 3: be a very haphazard process so far. There are people
Speaker 3: who have been charged who weren't there. There are people
Speaker 3: who were there who haven't, you know, necessarily but identified
Speaker 3: at this point in time. So it's it's it's it's
Speaker 3: a little bit of a mystery.
Speaker 4: And we'd we'd love to find out too, because you know,
Speaker 4: it's very for some for some reason we're able to
Speaker 4: determine using union lists obviously would be a massive practice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and already it seems like an unfair labor practice
Speaker 1: and a violation of like First Amendment rights and protected
Speaker 1: First Amendment speech and Jesus it it's yeah, it just
Speaker 1: seems that they're sort of half fasting this thing, which
Speaker 1: could have devastating consequences for some people, and they they've
Speaker 1: they've just kind of thrown a wide net and sort
Speaker 1: of I guess trying to work out after the fact
Speaker 1: what to do with this. Has it had like a
Speaker 1: chilling effect on on campus organizing on protesting their ongoing
Speaker 1: contract violations.
Speaker 4: No, you can't stare us. We're sticking in the union.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: Ironically, as as many of your listeners are probably aware
Speaker 4: from listening to earlier episodes of your podcast, you know,
Speaker 4: they have been a lot of tension on campus between
Speaker 4: the ars an out of the Social Sciences and the
Speaker 4: stam you know, getting back to the stripe and even
Speaker 4: before and they have actually gotten are substantially worse in
Speaker 4: the last couple of months based on the the vacancy
Speaker 4: elections that are the people. This ironically seems to be
Speaker 4: a huge miscolctivation on the part of the university because
Speaker 4: a lot of those issues that they haven't gone away
Speaker 4: have been absolutely subsumed in the you know, the injury
Speaker 4: into one. It's an insured mentality. So there's a great
Speaker 4: amount of solidarity. But going into the summer, I don't
Speaker 4: think any work around campus really expected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's excellent, that's great to hear.
Speaker 1: So talking of solidarity, I guess what can people do
Speaker 1: to help, Like it seems like do you have a
Speaker 1: legal defense fund? And if you're even allowed to have
Speaker 1: a lawyer? Is there something they can sign? Is there
Speaker 1: someone they can write to.
Speaker 2: Go ahead?
Speaker 4: So there is a petition going around for a kind
Speaker 4: of students faculty along nine community members. The address to
Speaker 4: that is a bit dot l y slash lucy SD
Speaker 4: drop the charges.
Speaker 2: One word all the lowercase the case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anything else, like are you a would you plan
Speaker 1: like marches and pigots and stuff as the process continues
Speaker 1: that people could join.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, and and if if you sign that petition.
Speaker 3: That's one way where the petition sort of has the
Speaker 3: dual goal of of sort of getting you know, demonstrating,
Speaker 3: uh to the administration that there's a wide level of
Speaker 3: awareness of this issue and concern over this issue, but
Speaker 3: also to make sure that anyone who wants to be
Speaker 3: involved in any way that they're able to support us,
Speaker 3: will be able to be kept in the loops. So
Speaker 3: if you use an email the address that you actually
Speaker 3: read when you sign the petition, you will certainly hear
Speaker 3: about any actions that we have. We are still very
Speaker 3: much in the early planning stages. As as Tom alluded
Speaker 3: to earlier, there is you know, a certain as there
Speaker 3: appears to be a certain aspect of strategizing here where
Speaker 3: the charges were given right at the point where campus
Speaker 3: becomes the least populated potentially of any time throughout the
Speaker 3: whole year except perhaps Christmas. But you know, there's still
Speaker 3: plenty of graduate students here. They are all, you know,
Speaker 3: just as shock as we are to see this unfolding.
Speaker 3: So I think we can definitely plan for, you know,
Speaker 3: some kind of actions to take place this summer.
Speaker 2: Nice, Yeah, maybe.
Speaker 4: We'll get some.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it'd be good if alumni if if people are alumni,
Speaker 1: like I know a decent number, if you see alumni
Speaker 1: listen and they reached out when we talked about the strike,
Speaker 1: that it would be great if those people could leverage
Speaker 1: that status because they U see goes hard on alumni
Speaker 1: for donations and they've stopped calling me now they know
Speaker 1: I'm poor. But I think those those of you who
Speaker 1: that you see is still calling for the nations, you know,
Speaker 1: that would be a good time to raise this or
Speaker 1: you know, you can email or whatever, an email the
Speaker 1: alumni office. But yeah, it's this is obscene and ridiculous
Speaker 1: and obviously like a continuation of union busting and their
Speaker 1: fundamental refusal to acknowledge student workers as workers apparently and
Speaker 1: only see people as students. And so, is there anything
Speaker 1: else you want people to know about this, anything else
Speaker 1: you'd like people to do to show solidarity before we
Speaker 1: wrap up?
Speaker 3: I think the big thing is just you know, sign
Speaker 3: the petition that will help you, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: stay in the loop, especially if you're kind of in
Speaker 3: the local area and are able to mountain join us
Speaker 3: in solidarity for any protests. Yeah. Again, if you're a
Speaker 3: UC alum of any kind, certainly make your thoughts known
Speaker 3: to u UCSD because apart from I would say that
Speaker 3: the two people, the two groups of people who have
Speaker 3: the most power to act in decent numbers in the situation,
Speaker 3: our professors in alumni and and so that would be Yeah,
Speaker 3: like what you said, that's a huge a huge would
Speaker 3: be a huge point of support. Other than that, I
Speaker 3: think just the way you know, I've I've been here
Speaker 3: for almost six full years now, and you know I've
Speaker 3: four of those were without a union. I'm a student researcher,
Speaker 3: so our union is brand new, and you can go
Speaker 3: back to the November episode to hear that whole story.
Speaker 3: But my point is that, you know, before we had
Speaker 3: this kind of network and this kind of collective organization
Speaker 3: to protect our rights, a lot of you know, I've
Speaker 3: seen a lot of friends who, through no fault of
Speaker 3: their own, ended up in some kind of you know,
Speaker 3: one sided process where it's them versus the bureaucracy, whether
Speaker 3: that's you know, they're a bad relationship with their professor
Speaker 3: or or you know, any number of things that might
Speaker 3: have come up along the way, health issues leading to
Speaker 3: lower you know, not not finishing work on time and
Speaker 3: you know, getting on the bad side of advisors or
Speaker 3: anything like that. You know, it is very easy in
Speaker 3: the status quo of the way the large university works
Speaker 3: to fall through the cracks and to have a bureaucracy
Speaker 3: act in secrecy to just simply kind of remove you
Speaker 3: without anyone really saying a word. So I think the
Speaker 3: most important thing is to keep eyes on this, to
Speaker 3: make sure the university knows that people are watching. That
Speaker 3: they can try to bring this process against us, but
Speaker 3: it is not going to be a pleasant experience because
Speaker 3: you know, the public and the the the workers here
Speaker 3: in the community here are going to be watching and
Speaker 3: they're going to be supporting us. So I think just
Speaker 3: just keep keep an eye on the situation if you can,
Speaker 3: if it's something that that you're interested in and able
Speaker 3: to do, and that that's really the biggest way I
Speaker 3: think to support us.
Speaker 4: I would also say that if you are a you
Speaker 4: see men either Statewie or and you see San Diego.
Speaker 4: The easiest way to prevent future alumni or events from
Speaker 4: being disrupted if it's actually.
Speaker 3: Out of the contract, Yes, that'd be a fantastic idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do know several.
Speaker 1: Professors listen, So it's time to do something hopefully, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're hopefully they will do something in solidarity, but I
Speaker 1: know a few of them listen and have reached out before. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. I'm sorry this is happening to you.
Speaker 1: We will keep people updated as the long process continues.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I hope, I hope you can enjoy your
Speaker 1: summer without teaching a little bit without this hanging over you.
Speaker 3: We'll try it. That's kind of my motivation is they
Speaker 3: you know, they're using it as a little bit of
Speaker 3: a psychological warfare in terms of live organizing. So I
Speaker 3: will just simply choose not to let it bother me
Speaker 3: at least as much as I can. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 3: thank you very much, Thanks James, Thank you.
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