Rebuild the Union

GRADUATE students here last Spring constructed a progressive organization which simultaneously advanced their own economic demands and raised a number of other significant issues that affected other groups in the community. The Graduate Student and Teaching Fellow Union not only fought potential cuts in pay for teaching fellows, but also demanded that its gains not come at the expense of other groups such as undergraduates and employees, and that the University make a full disclosure of its budget. And the Union endorsed other progressive demands advanced last Spring, such as the position held by black students in the dispute over Harvard's ownership of Gulf Oil stock.

Graduate students have since retreated from this stance, and are now seemingly content to look after nothing more than their own financial interests. As members of the now largely inactive Union ponder why undergraduates have lost interest in their cause, they would do well to trace the disillusionment to the changed position in their policy.

Undergraduates manned Union picket lines at work stoppages last Spring, helped circulate leaflets, and generally observed class boycotts. Some of this support undoubtedly was prompted by sympathy for the problems of graduate students, but it was fueled by the Union's successful linking of its own problems with the concerns of undergraduates. For instance, the Union called attention to the danger that decreasing the number of graduate students could mean larger sections and less teaching for undergraduates. In addition, the Union's unwillingness to support stands taken by other groups that did not benefit graduate students directly, as in the Gulf stock dispute, also added to its support.

This degree of support is now a distant memory. Undergraduates view inequities facing graduate students under the newly-imposed Kraus plan with no more alarm than they would respond to a claim by the Faculty that its salaries were being cut. The link between Harvard's policy toward graduate students and some of the problems of undergraduate education has been severed for undergraduates. Graduate student support for policies that have no immediate relevance to their wallets has evaporated.

Graduate students should keep last Spring's lessons in mind as they begin skirmishing with the Kraus plan. As long as they bumble about, unconcerned or unaware of how selfish their public stance appears, their support will continue to be non-existent. The Union should re-constitute itself, voice demands similar to those advanced last Spring, and carefully connect those demands to the interests with other groups in the University community. Only in this way can graduate students again increase their support to last Spring's levels.