We went to support the picket at Engineering 6, and our dog support increased from one to two.
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Day 15
The following is guidance issued by the Student Affairs Staff of the UCLA Department of History. Thanks Kevin Terraciano, chair of History, for sending along the information!
Incompletes. This grade may be issued if mutually agreed upon by the student and instructor. An “Incomplete” may be issued when most work for the course has been completed and at passing quality, but only a small portion of the course could not be completed due to a medical or other serious issue. Per the INC policy, the student would have until the end of the next registered and enrolled quarter to submit the missing work.
Some important caveats with this option: First, an INC will result in a permanent notation on the transcript. After the INC grade is replaced by the letter grade, both the updated and the INC grade are recorded on the transcript. Second, students are charged $5 when an INC grade is revised. Lastly, an INC grade binds the student to the course beyond the parameters of the instructional term, which means that if, for whatever reason, the student wanted to retroactively drop the course, they would not be allowed to do so; students cannot retroactively drop a course in which an INC grade was issued.
NR “No Report” grades. After the grading deadline, and until final grades are submitted, a student’s transcript shows an NR (No Report) grade for the class. When a final grade is submitted, it replaces the NR and there is no transcript notation. Approximately five to seven business days after the grading window closes, Gradebook will reopen for instructors, who may log into Gradebook and submit final grades retroactively.
Impact on students? Assigning either an INC or NR will not negatively impact a student’s GPA. If Fall 2022 is not the student’s graduating/filing term, then the grades should not pose an immediate negative effect on students with F-1 or J-1 visas, or federal financial aid recipients, because the enrollment verification cutoff for visa status and federal aid is determined at week 3 of each term (for policies governing maintenance of visa status, see Dashew’s site here for F1, here for J1). But if students are being supported by private or home country sponsored scholarships that require immediate reporting of quarterly grades, missing grades might impact their scholarship standing. More importantly, if Fall 2022 is a graduation/filing term for any student, international or domestic, the assignment of an INC or NR grade may prevent the awarding of the diploma/graduate degree. Lastly, graduate students begin to apply for summer and academic year fellowships as early as February. Some fellowships require graduate transcripts, so if Fall 2022 grades are not posted at the time of application, it may impact a student’s application.
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What should I do about grades?
UAW 2865, the union representing UC Academic Student Employees (ASE), asks faculty to exercise their legal rights under the California Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act (HEERA) by “refraining from picking up the labor that we as academic students employees are withholding, including the evaluation of final exams and/or papers, and the submission of grades.”
In particular, UAW 2865 asks faculty specifically:
- Do not do struck work. That is, do not grade assignments yourself or otherwise do work that we would be doing. You have no obligation to do this under HEERA.
- Do not hire additional labor to make up for the labor that we are withholding.
- Do not change the format of your exams, cancel assignments, or otherwise alter your syllabus to circumvent our strike.
- Do not submit grades based only on assignments that have already been graded or otherwise insert grades that are not representative. In other words, do not give everyone an A because of the strike.
- Do not report any academic worker or faculty member who is participating in the strike or honoring the picket line by withdrawing their labor.
In its response to a December 1, 2022 email from Provost Michael Brown, the Council of UC Faculty Associations, representing UC faculty system-wide, writes that “Senate faculty are being told that if they do not pick up the struck work of ASE grading some undergraduate students will be harmed. We share the concern for students that depend on their grades to access financial aid, to earn scholarships, and who need their grades for other reasons. However, it is the university’s responsibility to make contingency plans that ensure these students are not impacted by the strike, and some campuses have already communicated to undergraduates that such plans are in place. They have the capacity, as they did during the pandemic, to be flexible about grades and deadlines.” Accordingly at UCLA, the Fall 2022 grading deadline has been extended from December 19, 2022 to January 2, 2023.
As another example, on November 22, 2022, Michael Miller, Interim Associate Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education at UC Santa Barbara, announced: “In the event that a final grade for a course is not recorded, we are developing contingency plans to ensure that this would not impact your financial aid, athletic eligibility, prerequisite requirements, and/or the completion of your degree.”
Grace Hong, Professor of Gender Studies and Asian American Studies, and Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, writes: “Faculty members’ decision to withhold grade submission is intended to cause disruption of university business-as-usual in order to pressure the UC administration to engage in fair bargaining. While grade withholding can impact students, faculty can consider various ways to mitigate and circumvent any harm, via special dispensation for select students. Students with an urgent need for a grade should immediately contact the faculty member with a request for a workaround. For example:
- For students who are applying to graduate school, or have an employment offer contingent on degree-completion, faculty can offer to write a letter to admissions committees or to prospective employers, letting them know what grade the student received in their course, and explaining the lack of a grade on the official transcript.
- For students who are graduating at the end of fall quarter, students on international visas, etc. whose statuses might be affected by missing grades, faculty can selectively choose to submit grades. Faculty can do so by letting the grading deadline lapse, at which point, all unreported grades will be assigned an NR automatically. Once that happens, the faculty person can go back and individually file grade change requests for specific students.
Please do not assign incompletes (which stay on a student’s transcript) or DR grades (which are for students undergoing disciplinary review).”
In an additional FAQ on grading, the Council of UC Faculty Assocations states: “Under HEERA, faculty do not need to volunteer to perform struck work that is outside our customary duties. The longstanding practice for courses with assigned ASEs is for them to grade course assignments, proctor exams, and maintain the records of student grades. . . . If you are asked to do this grading, you may respond by declining the extra work and communicating that you do not wish to volunteer to take up the struck labor.”
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Day 14
It was a cool fall day, and we supported the strikers at Bunche Hall. Several strikers came up to say hello to Toast, who is increasingly securing his status as a loyal and charismatic strike supporter.
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Day 13
Today we had a great turnout (roughly 40 faculty and 400 students) for our Faculty Solidarity Rally at the Kuruvungna Steps (Janss Steps). Speakers included Michael Gutperle (Physics), Jake Aschieris (Film), Natalie Masuoka (Asian American Studies department chair and Political Science), Anna Markowitz (Education), and Graeme Blair (Political Science). Candace Hansen (Musicology) served as Master of Ceremonies and Santa. The rally was covered by the Los Angeles Times (pdf).
After the rally at the Kuruvungna Steps, we marched to Schoenberg Hall and then picketed the Faculty Club.
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Speech by Michael Gutperle, Dec 2
Michael Gutperle, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, gave the following speech at the Faculty Solidarity rally on December 2, 2022.
My name is Michael Gutperle and I am a professor of theoretical physics in the department of Physics and Astronomy. I am here today to show my solidarity with the striking graduate student teachers, researchers and postdocs.
Graduate students are essential for the research and teaching at UCLA and play a big part in making UCLA one of the top universities and research centers in the world. In my department I can’t think of any lab or research group which would be able to function and be successful without the essential work of graduate students and postdocs, and I am sure this is true throughout the whole university.
In Physics and Astronomy discussions and labs are very important and in fact in many cases they are the place where most of the learning happens. Undergraduate students solve problems and do experiments under the guidance of TAs, who interact with undergraduate students closely. TAs understand the struggles and problems of undergraduates better than professors (old codgers like me), since often they were undergraduates themselves only a few years ago. So the excellence in teaching at UCLA is also dependent on the hard work of graduate students.
I have been at UCLA for over twenty years, and for most of the time I have witnessed that the financial support of graduate students through TA and GSR appointments is not sufficient to live in Los Angeles. Financial hardship creates a lot of stress, which is detrimental to the success of the graduate students in their studies and research and therefore detrimental to the success of UCLA as a whole. This has become much worse in the last couple of years due to diminishing state support of the university, misplaced priorities of the university administration, the pandemic, the enormous increase in the cost of living and rent, and the high burden of student loans. As faculty we told ourselves many times that something needed to be done, but sadly nothing was really done. That is why I support the strike of graduate students, who with this strike are doing something to finally bring about change.
What can faculty do to support the strike ?
First, support the striking students. You can donate to the strike fund. Speak up on behalf of the strike in your department. Sign petitions and letters to the administration. Talk and educate your colleagues and undergraduate students in your classes!
Second, do not give failing grades or unsatisfactory grades in independent study and doctoral research classes like 596, 599 or such. The separation of paid research and academic research work is arbitrary and used to pressure graduate students to stop striking.
Third, do not pick up struck work and resist the push by the university administration to force faculty to replace TA work, do the grading of the TA, and submit grades by the grading deadline. Refuse to use outside-hired replacement work for grading or proctoring.
A university is a community of scholars which should treat all their members with dignity and respect. I urge the University of California to do exactly this and treat their graduate students with dignity and respect and agree to fair contracts.
Thank you and let’s all keep up the good fight.
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Day 12
We met at Bunche at 12:30pm as usual, then went to Dickson Court South for a large rally, and then marched to the Luskin Conference Center.
Please join us for a Faculty Solidarity March and Rally at 1pm on Friday December 2! We will meet at the Kuruvungna Steps (also known as the Janss Steps) at 1pm, hold a short rally, and then march to the Faculty Club. We will have great faculty speakers, we will give away buttons for strike supporters, and serve great food!
The UC-AFT, representing 6,500 Non-Senate Faculty and 350 Librarians at the ten UC campuses, yesterday sent a letter
to UC President Michael Drake stating:
“Campus administrators have been telling Unit 18 lecturers to consult with their union regarding how to continue our instruction without the essential help of GSIs in our classes. . . . Many of the administrators and supervisors who are making these recommendations are so far removed from the classroom, they don’t recognize the implications for our students. The suggested solutions being offered not only are inadequate, but also often instruct our members to violate provisions of our contract. Likewise, these recommendations are not fair to our undergraduate students, who depend on us to provide them with a consistent and high-quality education. The university has created an impossible situation for its students and teaching faculty and the only solution to these problems is to settle the strike now. . . . We urge you to bring an end to bad faith bargaining, end the university’s unfair labor practices, and settle the UAW contracts immediately.”
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Day 11
It got a little chilly today but we had a nice time supporting! We all got to meet Toast the dog.