The Chronicle of Higher Education
by Bennett Leckrone and Katherine Mangan
February 28, 2020
The University of California at Santa Cruz followed through with its threat to fire striking graduate instructors, university officials said on Friday.
Teaching assistants, who were withholding grades until the university met their demands for higher pay to cover rising housing costs, had been warned to stop their strike by Thursday or face dismissal.
“Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to find an amenable resolution, 54 teaching assistants have continued to withhold fall grade information,” Lori G. Kletzer, the interim UCSC campus provost and executive vice chancellor, said in a February 28 letter to the campus. “As a result, we have been left with no choice but to take an action that we had truly and deeply hoped to avoid. As I previously shared, students who fail to meet their contractual obligations by withholding fall grade information will not receive spring-quarter appointments, or if they have received them they will be dismissed from their spring-quarter appointments.”