Yale Teaching Fellows Capitulate

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP)--Yale University graduate students who stated a "grade strike" backed down once they were faced with losing their teaching jobs and pay.

The last holdouts turned in their grades Monday "so as to secure our teaching positions for the coming term," the group's chairperson, Robin Brown, wrote to Yale President Richard Levin.

Brown said the graduate student teaching assistants were the victims of a "brutal campaign of intimidation."

The members of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO) voted last Sunday to end the job action even though they had not won any concessions. The group had wanted to force Yale to recognize it as a union and negotiate better working conditions.

The administration had already barred one participant in the grade strike from teaching this semester, and students who failed to meet a Monday deadline for turning in the grades faced the same fate. The assistants are paid about $4,970 per semester.

"Faculty members have threatened striking (teaching assistants) with disciplinary hearings, with expulsion, with lockouts and with their academic careers," Brown complained in her letter to Levin.

The graduate student group represents about 25 percent of the school's 2,500 graduate students.

The withholding of undergraduate grades represented the most drastic step yet by GESO, which has been trying for the past five years to gain recognition as a union. Yale has maintained that the teaching assistants are students, not employees.

The university said 83 graduate students had withheld grades. The student group said more than 120 did not submit marks.

Yale spokesperson Thomas Conroy said the university welcomed the group's decision, adding: "There should, of course, never have been any withholding of grades in the first place."

Conroy said the administration would continue talking with the students to try to address their concerns.

"The only thing the university won't do is to recognize a student organization as a collective bargaining unit for all graduate students," he said.

The graduate students wanted to force the school to agree to negotiate a contract, but no talks were ever scheduled.

Despite the capitulation, Brown said that graduate students would continue to try to unionize.

"This is certainly not the end of the struggle. This is by no means over," said Brown. "We decided to go back in and regroup and frankly to take our jobs this semester. It's hard to organize a graduate teachers' union when you're not a teacher."

About 90 percent of graduate students get free tuition, which at Yale is $19,000 a year.

The graduate students were seeking a higher stipend, lower health-insurance costs, smaller classes, more teacher training and a procedure to air grievances.

Brown said she feared that some graduate students still would not get their teaching positions back. Conroy said that for some teaching assistants that question remained unresolved and that some could, indeed, lose their teaching appointments despite the strike's end.

Classes resumed Monday following winter break, and the undergraduates received their grade sheets.

For seniors, a prolonged strike could have affected their transcripts and their chances of getting into graduate schools.

"They should just get busy teaching," said Gus Kallergis, 21, a senior from Akron, Ohio. "The...strike has perverted the relationship that exists between professors and their graduate student teachers."

Jeff Glasser, 21, a senior from Montclair, J.J., said the graduate students' submission "shows an unlucky weakness" in the group's rank and file.

"They're willing to support GESO to a point, but they won't go all the way," he said.

Brown said the latest clash between the student group and the administration demonstrated "the lengths that Yale will go to to prevent unionization" and that it is essential the graduate students have a union.

Last week, 137 graduate students faculty and other supporters of the graduate students were arrested for blocking a street in demonstration over Yale's treatment of graduate students.

The student group also later filed a federal unfair labor practice complaint against Yale

Conroy said the administration would continue talking with the students to try to address their concerns.

"The only thing the university won't do is to recognize a student organization as a collective bargaining unit for all graduate students," he said.

The graduate students wanted to force the school to agree to negotiate a contract, but no talks were ever scheduled.

Despite the capitulation, Brown said that graduate students would continue to try to unionize.

"This is certainly not the end of the struggle. This is by no means over," said Brown. "We decided to go back in and regroup and frankly to take our jobs this semester. It's hard to organize a graduate teachers' union when you're not a teacher."

About 90 percent of graduate students get free tuition, which at Yale is $19,000 a year.

The graduate students were seeking a higher stipend, lower health-insurance costs, smaller classes, more teacher training and a procedure to air grievances.

Brown said she feared that some graduate students still would not get their teaching positions back. Conroy said that for some teaching assistants that question remained unresolved and that some could, indeed, lose their teaching appointments despite the strike's end.

Classes resumed Monday following winter break, and the undergraduates received their grade sheets.

For seniors, a prolonged strike could have affected their transcripts and their chances of getting into graduate schools.

"They should just get busy teaching," said Gus Kallergis, 21, a senior from Akron, Ohio. "The...strike has perverted the relationship that exists between professors and their graduate student teachers."

Jeff Glasser, 21, a senior from Montclair, J.J., said the graduate students' submission "shows an unlucky weakness" in the group's rank and file.

"They're willing to support GESO to a point, but they won't go all the way," he said.

Brown said the latest clash between the student group and the administration demonstrated "the lengths that Yale will go to to prevent unionization" and that it is essential the graduate students have a union.

Last week, 137 graduate students faculty and other supporters of the graduate students were arrested for blocking a street in demonstration over Yale's treatment of graduate students.

The student group also later filed a federal unfair labor practice complaint against Yale