Letters to the Editor: How UC has exploited the student academic workers on strike
This academic strike has become a “hot potato” in all UC’s publications and news outlets, in terms of its effects on campus life, its impact on students and staff, and yet, in general, UC has done a pretty terrible job of explaining the reasons for the dispute and its impact on student life. First of all, UC claims there are no “students” at the University of California, so the strike, which affects all campus employees, is a strike by only 20% of the academic workers at UC, according to UC’s math. This is a bald-faced lie.
A good number of the “students” are adjuncts, and the fact that they are adjuncts does not make them a small minority of the students — it actually makes them the majority. I teach at the University of California. The class number is only 2/3 of the class size, yet the students are the majority!
The fact that the majority of the “students” in the class are adjuncts is not surprising, as the University pays these people $11,000 for the year to be adjuncts. (In addition to this, the University gives them a car, a laptop, and other miscellaneous services for free.) Why is this such a surprise? Because these adjuncts are not part of the community — they are in the corporate world. They are not part of the community because they work in a corporate office. They are not even in the community because they have only an hour of class per week. They are not part of the community at all — they are part of the university itself. And the fact that a significant proportion of the class are adjuncts, makes UC, and the school, and its staff responsible for them.
These adjuncts are also, not surprisingly, part of the “professors” of the college in which they are employed. So are the adjuncts of all college professors in the state of California, and in fact, all universities in California. It’
