Graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley began a three-day strike on Tuesday in an attempt to force the university to grant them status as employees with the right to unionize, according to the Daily Californian, the UC-Berkeley student newspaper.
The strike at Berkeley is symbolic of an increasing trend among graduate students at universities across the nation -- they have sought to assert their status as employees rather than students, complaining of insufficient stipends and onerous workloads.
This is the second strike this year by Berkeley's graduate student union, a group that has been calling for the University to grant it recognition as a labor union with the powers of collective bargaining.
The Berkeley administration and student union officials have offered conflicting views on the effectiveness of the strike. But it is clear that the administration has remained unmoved in its position that graduate students are students and not faculty.
There is much less controversy, however, surrounding graduate students at the College.
According to Dean of Graduate Students Edward Berger, the difference between Dartmouth and other institutions is that "there is no linkage in terms of the pay that graduate students receive between fellowships and teaching."
Graduate students teach as part of their course of study.
"As a consequence, I never hear of anything from students having to do with feeling overworked or underpaid," Berger said.
Furthermore, the small size of Dartmouth's graduate student population -- which includes only 250 students enrolled in liberal arts and science programs and no more than 20 students in any given department -- lessens the likelihood of mass graduate student movements.
"At Dartmouth, graduate students are mostly in the sciences, where there is much more external funding," said James Hogan, an earth sciences graduate student. "At other universities, where graduate students are mostly in the humanities and funding is much less, there can be a problem."
This disparity in the stipends of graduate students in the humanities and graduate students in the sciences -- a major source of conflict at other universities -- remains a problem, if only a small one, at Dartmouth as well.
Berger explained the humanities departments "don't have access to research grants, for example, which is how we pay a lot of our graduate students."
He said more than 50 percent of graduate students are in the sciences, and these students are paid by their advisors' research grants, which are designed to include student salary.
Allison Stedman Alvarado, a graduate student in comparative literature, said graduate students are paid only $500 a month. "And our health bill alone is $325 dollars every other month," she added.
"It's hard to get by -- we are all dirt poor right now," Alvarado said. "A lot of people can't go home for Christmas."
Despite the low graduate student salaries, Alvarado appeared to harbor no ill will toward the College. "I guess there isn't much money available and the College does the best that it can," she said.
At Berkeley and elsewhere, however, graduate student unions are mobilizing in full force. Four other UC campuses are scheduled to go on strike in alternating weeks in May, with UC-San Diego beginning next week.
And the UC schools are not alone in their conflicts between graduate students and university administrations.
For two weeks last year, as much as 70 percent of Yale University's graduate student teaching assistants in the social sciences and humanities went on strike, ceasing to teach and grade papers and canceling nearly 400 classes and sections.
The strike was resolved, but an ongoing debate still rages between the Yale administration and many of the graduate students who see themselves as employees and thus claim the right to unionize.
The National Labor Relations Board filed suit against Yale in January for its handling of the strike. The NLRB alleges Yale infringed upon the workers' rights by threatening graduate student teaching assistants with discipline, in violation of the National Labor Relations Act.
Student employee unions have also formed at the Universities of Oregon, Massachusetts, Florida, Wisconsin and at Rutgers University.
