Rethinking “Inclusive Excellence”: A Critical University Studies Approach to COVID-19, the UC COLA movement, and Inequality in the University
If there’s one thing we know about power, it’s that it is most effective when it is obscured; we do not question what we cannot see, what we take for natural. This is something which the UC system depends on, positioning itself as a space of accessible education and “inclusive excellence” while refusing to engage with the way that the very infrastructure maintaining the UC is inherently antithetical to these goals. Wildcat strikers and organizers for the COLA4ALL movement currently sweeping through the UC system have done much to excavate these oppressive systems and contradictions foundational to the UC through the fight for a COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) and the simultaneous refusal to disconnect this specific goal from the need to address the broader violence of the institution.
For those unfamiliar, the movement initially started at UC Santa Cruz. UCSC graduate students, like nearly all UC graduate students, are rent burdened. During the Fall 2019 quarter, graduate student instructors began a wildcat grade strike, calling attention to the contradiction between the university’s dependence on graduate student labor to function and the university’s refusal to provide graduate students with a reasonable standard of living through a refusal to submit grades. The movement quickly spread, and now spans all 10 UC campuses (many of which are on a full or partial strike). COLA4ALL’s overall vision, taken from the inter-campus website StrikeUniversity.org, centers free and accessible public education for everyone (without student debt), critical thinking and skills that are not bound to the imperatives of the market, replacing competitive models with communities of care and shared struggle, brilliance that refuses hierarchical models of “experts,” and the decolonization, democratization, queering, and abolishing of the university.
The UC has responded to COLA organizers with violence which is deeply revealing of the anti-black, carceral power foundational to the entire system. Militarized police presence has been prevalent at COLA picket lines, walk outs, and other organizing events. During a COLA rally on February 20, 2020 at UC Irvine campus police officer Trish Harding tackled and arrested a Black alumna who was not even involved with COLA and simply on campus trying to pick up her transcripts (please sign the UCI Black Student Union’s petition demanding accountability). UC-wide, many students have been harassed, assaulted, and arrested for daring to tell administration that they cannot survive under “business as usual”.
Recently a student in one of my classes asked the professor about their stance on UC graduate students organizing for a COLA; the professor said that it was up to us as their students, asking if we would be willing to have our grades withheld. Framing the issue as one of undergraduate willingness to go without grades fundamentally misrepresents what is going on. None of us want our grades withheld. Many of us cannot afford to have our grades withheld. But the consequences of having our grades withheld only exist within the context of institutional intransigence, not graduate students going on a wildcat strike.
It is imperative that graduate students be paid fairly and the university reevaluates the oppressive model it is currently operating under.
One of the things that stands out to me in the way that COLA4ALL is discussed is the emphasis put on the fact that the strike is illegal because UAW 2865, the graduate student union, has not voted to strike. As those of us who have critically engaged with criminality and the construction of “illegal”, part of the discourse surrounding illegality is an undermining of the value and contributions of those who are positioned as “illegal.” This is something which is, of course, multiply impactful to those who are already criminalized, as we can see clearly in police response to Black alumni existence on campus. The law is so often unjust and frequently sides with those who hold power and money. Why is it illegal for workers to organize outside of a singular union? Why is it legal for the UC system to put union busting measures into their contracts? Why do we talk about the wildcat strikes in terms of legality instead of engaging critically with the University as an institution?
The extraction of wealth from students is central to the current operation of the UC. This is evident in the high cost of tuition and the rate of student debt, and further heightened through the multitude of ways in which the UC system profits off of its students; while we can think about this in the insane cost of parking, the use of work-study to maintain a labor force of minimum wage workers, the denial of sick pay to undergraduate student workers, the tokenization and marketing of students, and the obviously inflated prices at on-campus stores like The Hill or Zot-n-Go, no where is it more apparent than in housing. Focusing on graduate students, since COLA4ALL is currently focused on improving pay and labor conditions for graduate students, not only are the majority of students extremely rent burdened, but many are living in “subsidized” campus housing, paying large portions of their paychecks back to the very institution already underpaying them and exploiting their labor. It very much feels like company scrip.
Under the social distancing/remote learning model being deployed in response to COVID-19 many of these already untenable circumstances are only being heightened. Housing insecurity, a major problem for many undergraduate and graduate students alike, is significantly increased through the rise in un-and-under-employment resulting from shelter-in-place closures; meanwhile, the UC system is encouraging students to leave campus while doing nothing to assist those who live in off-campus housing who are now not only rent burdened and frequently living in highly crowded living quarters during a pandemic, but given no option to break their lease without penalty and are still required to somehow continue paying rent despite changes in their ability to work.
Similarly, while some campus employees are now able to telecommute to work the administration obviously has no intention of allowing those working in food services, maintenance, custodial services, etc to “conference in”, leaving them at continued risk while prioritizing the safety of those in higher wage positions. Additionally, graduate students and professors without access to the technology needed to teach from their homes are being encouraged to continue to come to campus and teach from classroom spaces. What this means is that those with the resources (stable housing, internet access, a computer with a webcam and mic) can work safely from home, while the most marginalized (those most in need of a COLA) will have to risk exposure.
Furthermore, many telecommuting workers are being told they must sign a contract which includes the provision that employees are “responsible for establishing and maintaining a safe, ergonomically sound, and secure work environment. The employee will establish a functional workspace, including appropriate computer and communications equipment within their telecommuting worksite.” Forcing workers to sign this contract creates a situation where the UC is not obligated to ensure students/workers have access to either the tools they need to work remotely or paid leave, and further establishes that the UC is not responsible for work-related damage to the health and personal equipment of workers. It also makes it possible for the UC to fire those who are not able to independently establish and maintain said work environment.
The level of exploitation and discriminatory violence on this campus and in the UC system is unethical and untenable. The fact that a billion dollar institution would rather negatively impact graduate and undergraduate students, would rather pay for a militarized police presence at the picket line, would rather heighten the risk to their most marginalized students and employees, would rather arrest a Black alumna than pay graduate student workers a living wage speaks for itself. This is not about whether undergraduate students can afford to go without grades, it is about refusing a system where the interests of graduate student workers and the interests of undergraduate students are falsely constructed as oppositional.
The stakes are too high not to speak candidly. I hope you will consider openly standing in solidarity with COLA4ALL.
The grad students at my alma mater are striking for a cost of living adjustment and I feel so far away and so useless because I can't offer much financial support and I don't know what else to do several states away...
Happy Valentine’s day to our UCSC strikers from Janet Napolitano! For anyone outside of this all and don’t know what’s going on here — UC graduate students from UCs all throughout the state (though this information is from my first-hand experience with the UCSC strikes happening currently) have decided to break away from their union which contracted these students into not being ABLE to strike— essentially ridding these people of their free speech against this very administration that claims to offer constant support for their students. This, as we’ve seen over the past week especially, is nothing but a performance from the university!
Graduate students are demanding a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) so graduate students are able to LIVE. Most graduate students (as well as undergrads, from what I personally observed and experienced) are rent burdened to severe degrees, with the amount of houseless students —both graduate and undergradute— growing as the administration claims to be a helpless victim of the “housing crisis”. I know for a fact there are plenty of vacant rooms throughout campus and the administration has been consistently lying to students via emails about what the situation REALLY is.
The past week has been as follows: Monday the police presence (which the UC is paying upward $300,000 each day for) kettled around students peacefully protesting in the street and began hitting them with their batons. Some of my own friends were brutalized by police this week. Wednesday the police presence completely surrounded strikers around the enire intersection. They began to physically drag strikers out of the street when they were just sitting down protesting. Students reported broken fingers and bruised ribs — there is video footage of a police officer stepping on a student’s neck. That student was sent to urgent care afterwards. The police arrested 17 students who are now (mostly—all but 1 student) released but have been given a suspension by the university.
This is an open-ended strike until graduate students get their COLA from the administration.
