Zia Puig spent the better part of two decades working toward the day they would finally set foot on the University of California, Santa Cruz campus. When they opened their acceptance offer from the school’s feminist studies program in spring 2018, they accepted it without a moment’s hesitation.
Nearly two years later, the Ph.D. student sat in front of a crowd with a megaphone in one hand and phone in the other.
They had $13 left in savings.
“I will stay here not eating as usual and not resting as usual – overworked, exhausted and in pain ... until this university pays us more,” Puig said.
Their voice quivered with anger. Tears trickled down their colorless cheeks as they sat in their wheelchair, a red blanket draped over their lap. Their thinly clad shoulders stooped from hunger, sleep deprivation and the exhaustion of years spent chasing an elusive American Dream.
Dec. 9 marked the first day of a grading strike among graduate students over low wages and high rent that would soon transform into a full-blown, campuswide work stoppage.
Puig was speaking at a rally outside the McHenry Library. Students were invited to write down what they had eaten during the day.
“Half of a free muffin,” one wrote, underlining the word “free.” “Oatmeal (it’s 2 pm),” another wrote. “Absolutely nothing,” a third-year graduate student penned.
For Puig, this was a daily reality. They couldn’t afford to eat three meals a day on a salary that went primarily to rent. With two jobs and a Ph.D. program to complete, they could barely find the time to sleep. And as a student with a disability, they said being awake meant living in constant pain.
Joining the grading strike was not a choice – it was a necessity.
“You realize that it's not you failing,” Puig said when interviewed in May. “It’s a system that is made for everyone to not sleep, to (feel) like shit and to be sad. And who wants to live in a world like that?”
Hundreds of graduate students at UCSC began a full teaching strike Feb. 10. They stopped teaching, grading and holding office hours. Students were asking campus administration for a monthly cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, of $1,412.
In a matter of months, the movement spawned demonstrations, rallies and solidarity strikes across the UC system. Graduate students at UC Santa Barbara began a full teaching strike Feb. 27. Students at UC Davis and UC San Diego pledged to withhold winter grades. Students at UC Berkeley started striking March 16, while students at UCLA voted to strike week 10 of winter quarter.
The movement, collectively known as COLA 4 All, gave students like Puig hope for a new reality where they could eat, sleep and make it to the end of their graduate programs.
It all seemed possible. That is, until the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s just a brand”
Puig, a Venezuelan-Lebanese immigrant, came to the United States to become a professor. As a Eugene Cota-Robles fellow at UCSC, Puig receives stipends of $21,000 in the first, third and fifth years of their feminist studies Ph.D. program, which traditionally takes six years to complete. However, this financial support is not enough to live in Santa Cruz County, which is now the nation’s second-most expensive housing market.
Puig currently pays $1,270 each month to live in university housing. A parking permit costs them an additional $300 per quarter. As a result, Puig said they did not see much of their salary during their first year – the money they earned from their fellowship went straight back to the university.
For students in Santa Cruz, this is not unusual – in fact, it is expected. Based on findings from the UC’s 2017 Graduate and Professional Student Cost of Attendance Survey, organizers estimate UCSC graduate students pay on average $1,338.59 in housing and utilities per month. With a monthly post-fee stipend of $2,330.38, the typical graduate student can expect to spend nearly 60% of their income on housing.
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development currently defines households that spend at least 30% of their annual income on housing to be cost-burdened. By this definition, graduate students are severely rent-burdened.
“My first year was a sort of realization of the fact that what was offered to me as a huge opportunity was actually, in one way or another, set up for me to get in debt,” Puig said.
Since Puig started at UCSC, they have held three different jobs, sometimes simultaneously. The chronic exhaustion from working, teaching and writing is particularly deadly for Puig, who has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. EDS, which weakens soft connective tissue like skin, blood vessels and joints, results in the hyperextension of organs and chronic dislocation of limbs.
Every morning, Puig must reposition their fingers, kneecaps, shoulders and neck. They cannot sit or stand for long periods of time without feeling dizzy. A three-minute walk is equivalent to running a marathon.
For Puig, a Ph.D. program that would mean at least three more years of a life in relentless pain no longer seemed worthwhile.
“They break you down,” Puig said. “A university in which social justice is pressured, cultivated, nurtured, fostered – it’s just a brand.”
When the COLA 4 All campaign began in December, Puig eagerly joined as a student organizer. They gave free food to students in dining halls and organized rallies, relishing the collective political power of a joined community. But Puig’s hope was brought to an abrupt end when UC President Janet Napolitano threatened to terminate striking graduate students in an email sent out Feb. 14. In the same statement, Napolitano wrote that she would not negotiate with graduate students for a cost-of-living adjustment. United Auto Workers Local 2865, the union that represents more than 19,000 graduate student employees across the UCs, had brokered a four-year contract in summer 2018. The contract contains a no-striking clause.
Over the course of the wildcat strike – a strike that is not authorized by employees’ union – upward of 17 students were arrested by law enforcement. According to an article published by Vice, campus police used military-grade equipment to track students during protests. Officers also used an FBI-operated monitoring platform to gather intelligence on student-organized groups.
Just two weeks after Napolitano’s threat, Puig and 53 other graduate students were fired from their spring employment. Another 28 students were told they would no longer be eligible for spring appointments.
“Not your rent”
More than 300 miles away, anthropology graduate student Tyanna Slobe had just returned to Los Angeles after a quarter in Chile. When she heard the UCSC administration had dismissed 82 students for failing to submit fall grades, she joined the ranks of the UCLA 4 COLA campaign as an organizer.
UCLA graduate students voted in early March to strike if 10 departments agreed to participate. Just over one week later, the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered classroom doors and drove students off campus.
Slobe, who was expecting to return to Chile on April 9 to continue her dissertation research on educational inequalities between public and private school students, was grounded in the United States. In addition to the $800 she is now paying for a room in Echo Park, she is shelling out $600 for her apartment in Chile. That contract doesn't expire until August.
Because of the pandemic, Slobe is registered in absentia at UCLA. This means she is only paying 15% of student tuition and fees. As a result of taking an absentia leave, Slobe is not eligible for a TA, tutor or readership appointment with her department this quarter.
However, Slobe is still working. She is currently a research assistant for her faculty advisor. But working from home with four other residents has not been easy. Slobe and her roommates bought a $200 router at the beginning of the quarter because their Wi-Fi could not handle the pressure of five simultaneous users. Additionally, her computer, which is 5 years old and nearly out of storage, cannot process videos. Slobe has been using her phone to attend Zoom meetings.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, UCLA 4 COLA has shifted its focus to advocating for work-from-home funding and a universal one-year time-to-degree extension. This would give graduate students an additional year of funding to accommodate time lost to the public health crisis. What concerns Slobe, however, is the lack of communication on the future of students’ research. Most of the notifications she’s received from the graduate division have been about teaching.
“I didn't come to UCLA to TA,” Slobe said. “I like teaching, I really do, but I came to UCLA to do my dissertation project.”
The future of her dissertation project is now uncertain because of the unpredictability of funding. For many graduate students, external funding is the primary source of research support, Slobe said. Slobe herself has applied for upward of 50 grants during her time at UCLA. But in light of the pandemic, many organizations have canceled external funding opportunities.
Slobe made it to the second stage of applying for a grant that would have given her one year’s worth of funding when the organization notified her it had canceled the grant altogether.
“We need that money to survive,” Slobe said. “External funding should be a cherry on top to help you get research equipment or something – not your rent.”
“Feelings of loss”
Graduate students at UCSC decided to submit fall and winter grades April 27. In a statement released by organizers, students announced they would be moving to a new phase of organizing.
“By submitting the grades we have carried through our struggle, we ensure that our students receive the grades they earned despite the administration’s continued indifference towards undergraduate education,” the statement read.
UC Berkeley 4 COLA organizer Alejandra Decker was disappointed when she first heard the news. She couldn’t help but wonder what this would mean for the COLA movement – a campaign borne from the staunch refusal of students to submit grades.
Before the pandemic, the COLA campaign at Berkeley was at its height, the graduate student in Spanish and Portuguese said. Hundreds of students attended general assembly meetings. Graduate students from 16 departments signed on to strike, and there was a sense the movement could pave the way for a new future.
But the first day of students’ strike marked the beginning of the first full week of online classes for the Berkeley campus.
By the end of April, the only departments that had not crossed the picket line were the African American studies and ethnic studies departments, Decker said. The pandemic forced many students to abandon the work stoppage. The number of student organizers declined and general meetings no longer had the same joyful energy they once brimmed with.
“We’re all grappling with feelings of loss, of uncertainty and there’s not ... a sense that we’ll be back together soon,” Decker said. Decker currently pays $1,350 each month to live in a small bedroom in a house she shares with four roommates. Of her monthly stipend, 62% goes to paying rent.
General assemblies are now held over Zoom. When they were held in-person, hundreds of students attended these meetings. Now Decker, who is one of a handful of original student organizers left, has turned her efforts to preserving what is left of the campaign. This means reaching out to faculty members in her department, reminding students to attend general assemblies and working out new demands.
But Zoom cannot come close to replicating what organizers once had when they were able to meet in person. Conducting meetings over the computer is like watching a television screen, Decker said. Not only is it difficult to feel as if she is participating in important conversations – it is alienating.
“When I saw this movement happen, I latched onto it for life because it was the only way I was going to be able to afford a doctor’s degree here,” Decker said. “So when that ended, it was a sense of loss even bigger than the movement itself. It was a sense of, ‘Am I going to be able to stay here for the rest of my time?’”
“The only thing we need”
UAW Local 2865 has been circulating an Unfair Labor Practices strike pledge since the beginning of March. According to the statement released by UCSC student organizers April 27, more than 3,600 students had signed the pledge. The union hopes to have 5,000 students sign on before it calls for a unionwide strike vote.
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, UAW Local 2865 has focused its efforts on supporting graduate students as they continue to teach, learn and conduct research from home, said Rafael Jaime, the southern vice president of UAW Local 2865 and an English graduate student at UCLA. The union is still planning its next steps in the fight to secure a cost-of-living adjustment for graduate students.
The COLA movement, however, has continued in the virtual sphere.
At the beginning of spring quarter, student organizers launched Strike University, a think tank that offers free online education about decolonizing and democratizing the UC system. With weekly workshops and teach-ins over Zoom, Strike University aims to highlight the lived experiences of historically marginalized populations. Past sessions include “Stop LAPD Spying: Police State & Gender & Sexuality in Time of COVID” and “Coping, Healing, & Care Amidst a Global Pandemic.” In early April, Decker co-led a teach-in on feminist movements around the world with her professor.
Strike University, alternatively known as the People’s University, also offers training and educational resources for students who are on strike or interested in striking, said Katie Latimer, a physics graduate student at UC Berkeley. Each campus has one to two student liaisons who are responsible for contacting professors and students at their respective universities to arrange teach-ins. Latimer, for instance, is the primary liaison for the Berkeley campus.
“It’s an effort to resist this sort of neoliberal university, which is made all the more relevant as COVID-19 lays bare the for-profit motives of the UC system,” said UC Irvine criminology, law and society graduate student and Strike University organizer Courtney Echols.
Echols, who is also an organizer with UCI 4 COLA, is not enrolled in classes this quarter because she does not want to “be complicit in the University's desire for educational continuity.” With some students now working from homes contaminated with mold or asbestos, she believes a cost-of-living adjustment has never been more essential.
“Our working conditions are also unsafe because our living conditions are unsafe,” Echols said.
Graduate students at UCI have been on a social welfare strike since March 30. In place of grading and holding office hours, organizers have turned their attention to raising money for financially insecure students, creating COVID-19 resource guides and organizing clothing and food drives, Echols said.
Puig has also turned to virtual organizing in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. They hope to continue community building despite the lack of in-person contact because it is, in itself, a form of advocacy.
With this in mind, Puig created the organization, A Place 4 Us. The name is an homage to Harriet Tubman, whose last words were “I go to prepare a place for you.”
A Place 4 Us is a virtual network that prepares care packages for students across the UC system. Within those packages, there are instructions for sewing masks and creating hand sanitizers for those who do not have access to proper protective measures against the virus.
For Puig, COLA 4 All was just a rehearsal for the new reality ushered in by the pandemic. At its core, they said, the COLA movement was and still is a campaign to provide for the most basic needs of students.
Regardless of what those are.
“What we learned in COLA was that the only thing we needed to do for people to be OK was for people to be in a space in which they can love each other and they can feed each other,” Puig said. “Literally, that's the only thing we need.”