We hope you are doing as well as possible given the accumulated fatigue from last quarter as well as the recent storms. While the strike has ended (although the contract was overwhelmingly rejected by our campus), we realize that many of you may have questions about its resolution, the subsequent consequences for our campus, as well as the issues of outstanding grades, GSR effort reporting, and self-attestations. Therefore, we invite you to an open meeting on Wednesday, January 18th at 5pm. Please RSVP here.
Senate faculty who honored the picket line and withheld labor during the UAW strike are now being asked to complete self-attestation forms. We are seeking further information on your rights in relation to these forms and therefore ask that you not take any action until we can provide additional guidance.
Faculty have also recently received notice that the CEP policy in which missing grades will be automatically transformed into a P still stands. While this makes the issue of Fall grading somewhat less urgent, it also creates new inequities and problems. We understand these P grades to be a temporary measure that fails to guarantee what we firmly believe students deserve: to have their work graded. SCFA reiterates our position that faculty should not volunteer to take on additional grading labor beyond our customary duties and that the university should hire readers to complete the Fall quarter grading labor – a process that has begun on other campuses. We also continue to advocate for this labor to be centrally funded. Graduate student workers will be organizing department-level meetings for all instructional workers to discuss this issue in the coming weeks and we strongly encourage faculty to attend.
While acknowledging that we all need (and deserve) a break from the multiple crises of the past few years, we also feel that the way in which the strike is being resolved at UCSC may have lasting implications for the working conditions of faculty. As we are committed to preserving the research mission of our university, we feel that it is vital for us to reflect on how to continue to advocate for the best possible circumstances to promote excellence in research and teaching.