Photo by Sal Ingram.

Erik Green, a second-year graduate student in the education department, once heard an “urban legend” that the department had teaching assistant (TA) positions to spare five years ago. The current reality is that some graduate students are lucky to be granted one TAship a year.

Drastic budget cuts affect not only non-academic staff employment and faculty positions at UC Santa Cruz, but also graduate students. Green is just one of the many graduate students experiencing the ramifications of the elimination of over 100 teaching assistant positions.

“There are people in the department who want to teach, [but they] have not been able to,” Green said.

Like many graduate programs at UC Santa Cruz, a TAship is one of the degree requirements for the education department. Green tried to get a TAship for all three quarters of this academic year, but so far has only secured one.

In addition to fulfilling the education degree requirement, Green also needs the TAship for two other reasons: experience and funding.

“I want to become a university professor and it [is] vital to have teaching experience,” Green said.

Ideally, Green wants to TA for the education courses that he hopes to be teaching in the future.

Green, like other UCSC graduate students, depends on TAships as a source of funding. A fellowship supported Green’s first year at UCSC, but since it ended he is scrounging for funding opportunities, taking out student loans and trying to work in the department as a graduate student researcher.

“I’ve got bills to pay and having something secured on campus would be better than something off-campus that may or may not fit with schoolwork,” Green said.

If Green is unable to secure TAships for the rest of the academic year, he will apply for loans and look for opportunities teaching and tutoring off-campus.

In addition to the elimination of TA positions, Green said the lack of both research opportunities and funding for senior students contribute to the limited amount of TAships.

“People who have advanced to candidacy are still TAs,” Green said.

Green offered a few ideal scenarios for the future of TAships. If the money is there, Green would like to see funding go back to restoring TAships and providing TAships for all those who need them.

“Public education is a public good [we should] reinvest in,” he said. “Unfortunately, education is the first on the cutting board.”

More realistically, Green would like to see the university and the department work with students to help develop a comprehensive plan financing their careers.

Over 100 Teaching assistants of the UAW Local 2865 union attended the first statewide meeting under newly elected leadership. Photo by Sal Ingram

Heavy applause erupted as the 10 newly elected Executive Board members of the teaching assistants’ union, UAW Local 2865, were introduced at the first statewide membership meeting on Saturday.

Following a contentious election, all 10 Executive Board members come from the Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (AWDU) slate.

“This was probably twice as big as any meeting we’ve had in the past,” said Executive Board president and UC Irvine graduate student Cheryl Deutsch. “It’s the only venue where members get to make decisions.”

In order to make any decisions, meetings need to have quorum, over 100 members in attendance. Deutsch said they have never before achieved quorum in their local’s history.

Holding at least one statewide meeting a year is mandatory, according to the UAW bylaws. Executive Board members want to hold them twice a year, alternating campuses.

As excited TAs hit the tables in the UC Berkeley Boalt Law school classroom to cheer for their new officials, members of the opposing party, United for Social and Economic Justice (USEJ), did not share the same level of enthusiasm.

UC Davis head steward and USEJ member Xochitl Lopez said organizers gave only two weeks’ notice for the meeting, and violated by-laws. UCB is no longer in session, even though all campuses are supposed to be when the statewide meetings are held.

“The meeting was problematic,” Lopez said. “It was called to disenfranchise people from our slate [USEJ] specifically.”

An estimated 130 members attended. Around eight were USEJ members, and the rest were from AWDU. Northern UC campuses are known to have a higher AWDU membership and southern campuses tend to have higher USEJ memberships. Deutsch said members from the north were over-represented, as the meeting was held at UC Berkeley.

Soon-to-be UCLA graduate student and USEJ member Sayil Camacho won the most votes for the UCLA head steward position, but was voted out of office at the meeting because she was not an enrolled student. Camacho was accepted by UCLA in January and is starting class in fall 2011.

“I’m not just going to hand over my position because … they say I can’t participate,” Camacho said.

Camacho received emails she said were accidentally forwarded by elections committee member and UC Santa Cruz graduate student Adam Hefty. She said elections committee members are supposed to remain unbiased, but in the emails Hefty discussed her elegibility to run with AWDU members.

“It’s clear if I had been on the AWDU slate my eligibility wouldn’t have been questioned,” Camacho said.

UCLA AWDU members initially approached Hefty regarding Camacho’s eligibility and he said he intentionally made that information public by putting it on a blog and on Facebook.

“I encouraged people to get back to me with feedback and concerns,” Hefty said. “I had easier access to AWDU perspectives, being from UCSC.”

Hefty acknowledged his sympathies for AWDU and said the majority of the elections committee are aligned with USEJ.

Executive Board president Cheryl Deutsch said she told attending USEJ members that as difficult as it may have been, she hopes they were not intimidated by parliamentary procedure.

The next statewide meeting will be held at a Southern California campus and Deutsch said she thinks attendance will increase.

“It was a great feeling to achieve that quorum,” said Brian Malone, UCSC graduate student and former campus head steward. “It’s just something that [hasn’t happened] … Even though statewide meetings are required, they weren’t taken seriously.”

Despite Camacho’s situation, she appreciates the interest of union members.

“Having two slates is a good thing,” Camacho said. “It means people are interested.”

“It’s the biggest change our union has seen,” said UCSC graduate student Sara Smith, who was recently elected northern vice president on the Executive Board.

United for Social and Economic Justice (USEJ), ran against AWDU and is comprised of many incumbents from the previous Executive Board and campus branches of UAW Local 2865.

Filiberto Nolasco, UC Santa Barbara UAW head chair and USEJ member, said AWDU caused many problems in the election, and hopes the union has the integrity to address those issues. The election faced poll station shutdowns, biased election committee members, intimidation tactics and suspicious envelopes, Nolasco said.

“There’s a lot of diverse opinions on how to run the union and these differences need to be recognized,” Nolasco said.

The new Executive Board held its first meeting on Sunday and is planning a meeting open to all union members this Saturday.

AWDU plans to work with other unions and UC workers, in addition to fostering a network between campuses within UAW Local 2865.

“Now there’s a lot of potential to transform our union [into one] that’s more effective in winning stronger contracts,” Smith said.

In addition to teaching two sections for a class called U.S. History After WWII, UC Santa Cruz history graduate student Sara Smith is running for UAW Local 2865 Executive Board’s northern vice president as a member of Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (AWDU).

“This is the biggest crisis our union’s ever had,” Smith said.

AWDU is one of the two competing caucuses, similar to political parties, and was founded in 2009 when they felt UAW Local 2865 leadership wasn’t doing enough to combat budget cuts.

Smith said the 10-person UAW Executive Board currently makes decisions for 12,000 members. AWDU wants to increase democratic participation in decision-making among union members by spreading out the power concentrated in this board.

In response to rise of AWDU, the United for Social and Economic Justice (USEJ) caucus was born and is comprised of many incumbents.

“Current leadership [in UAW 2865] gave themselves a name to run against us,” Smith said of the formation of the USEJ.

She said USEJ has no presence at UCSC.

Daraka Larimore-Hall, executive board president, UC Santa Barbara sociology graduate student and TA, is running for re-election as a USEJ member. He said USEJ is responsible for bring 20,000 laborers into UAW.

“Our group was instrumental in making this happen,” Larimore-Hall said.

Adam Hefty, a UCSC election committee representative and graduate student, said that during Saturday’s ballot count, three of the six present election committee members voted to stop the count and adjourned the meeting, leaving the votes from UC Berkeley and UCLA uncounted.

“The election committee felt they couldn’t continue [to count the ballots] because of the atmosphere of hostility at the vote count,” Larimore-Hall said.

Hefty did not agree with the three election committee members who decided to stop counting.

“There was no pause for me to be able to vote or understand the motion that was going on,” Hefty said. “Three of six doesn’t constitute a majority.”

Smith said AWDU won at UC Davis, UC Irvine and UCSC, and received 95 percent of the votes at UCSC.

Even though USEJ won at UC Riverside, UCSB and UC San Diego, she said AWDU had a good chance of winning once UCLA and UC Berkeley’s votes were counted.

Both parties wanted the count to resume but didn’t agree upon terms under which the voting would continue.

On Tuesday the election committee decided counting would resume on the morning of May 5, supervised by a neutral mediator. Candidates and their supporters won’t be allowed in the room.

Smith said two ballot boxes from UCLA and UCSD were spoiled because they contained votes that weren’t concealed in the two appropriate identification envelopes. This caused Smith to fear voters were trying to vote twice or were stuffing the ballots.

Candidates from both parties said they were personally attacked during the campaign and the counting deadlock.

Larimore-Hall said he received strings of texts from AWDU supporters telling him he was going to jail because of what USEJ is doing.

“It’s absolutely disgusting the way AWDU’s been acting [since before] the election started,” he said.

Yuting Huang, UCLA graduate student and AWDU candidate for head steward at the UCLA campus level, said she was frustrated at times during the campaign and even cried.

She said she couldn’t always talk to voters after USEJ campaigners because they physically blocked her by walking voters to the polls.

“Many people will vote with very little information,” she said. “I felt people wanted to listen to both sides. Elections shouldn’t be run like that.”

UC Davis graduate student Xochitl Perez is running for the Executive Board’s northern vice president position with USEJ against Smith, and disagreed with aspects of AWDU’s campaign.

“We [in USEJ] attempted to focus on our record, while AWDU focused a lot on harassing our candidates by urging them to step down,” Perez said.

Perez said she was verbally insulted by two male AWDU candidates during the three days of voting and nobody stopped them.

“This conduct is not consistent with AWDU’s message,” she said. “This is not just running on issues. This is running a campaign of intimidation.”

During the counting stalemate, AWDU members sat in at the UCLA and Berkeley UAW offices and held a rally at UC Berkeley.

After teaching her Monday discussion, Smith returned to Berkeley. She said they will stay there until the ballot counting finishes.

Ilustration by Bela Messex

The teaching assistants at UC Santa Cruz usually grade your essays and finals, lead discussion sections, provide a connection to the professor, and help establish the curriculum and teaching style of the class.  Let’s take a moment to realize just how important TAs are to the University of California, though they deserve much more than just a moment.

Granted, there is some overlap in workload with the professors, but they need TAs just as much as we, the students, do.  How else would a class of 200 students receive their essays or tests back in a timely fashion?

However, the TA is a dying breed, due greatly to constant budget issues that have plagued our university system for years. And now, we face the possibility of losing an additional 120 TAs.

We need our TAs now more than ever, and making cuts to that sector of our university would be doing a huge disservice to the students who essentially fund every aspect of our university at this point.

It’s our money, so we should be able to say what we want to keep — and what we want to keep is our TAs.

Hang with us here, because as crazy as this may sound, the TAs are integral to our learning environment.  If we take them out of the system, we’re going to be the ones facing the repercussions.

Let’s build up some of this nightmare.

Cutting TAs would mean: less student-instructor interaction in larger classes, more difficulty enrolling in smaller courses (since the number of TAs usually dictates the class size), and even fewer places to engage in open discussion and refine our perspectives.

And that’s just what we’re able to perceive. Who knows what else would follow in the aftermath of more cuts? It’s probably safe to say there would be more protests, and deservedly so.

Our university is hemorrhaging.  It’s an issue that California is dealing with, from state jobs to the housing market and even NBA basketball teams (farewell, Sacramento Kings). The issue is universal.

We just want to know that the university is truly looking into all aspects of their spending, and that they aren’t just figuring that these graduate students — who give up their time, blood, sweat and tears — are not just a dime a dozen. Individual TAs can’t be easily replaced, especially while they’re getting screwed over as a whole.

City on a Hill Press has always suggested looking at cutting from the top, because top UC administrators’ salaries could easily pay for many TAs.

Another possible solution is offering class credit to TAs instead of paying them. This is something that is already done in some departments, such as psychology and economics, and college core courses.

These are hard times for everyone in California, especially within the UC system — with an additional $500 million in cuts on the way, and the possibility of even more.  However, making cuts to the TAs, the very people who arguably have the largest connection with students and the way that they learn, is not the right move for the UC system.

Illustration by Kenny Srivijittakar.

Fewer classes, fewer teachers, fewer TAs. While paying the highest tuition in the history of the University of California, students are beginning to notice the dwindling resources on campus.

Throughout the UC system, cuts from the state are being implemented. Over the past two years, upwards of $50 million has been subtracted from UC Santa Cruz’s budget, according to UCSC administration .

“[The cuts] have a tremendous impact on UCSC, especially in the humanities and social sciences,” said Karen Bassi, literature department chair.

The biggest impacts Bassi noted were fewer courses, loss of TAships and lower salaries for staff and faculty.

“Last year, the literature department offered 123 courses, while this year we offer 101,” she said.

Bassi also explained that the loss of graduate student TAs who can lead sections has an effect on the quality of teaching for undergrads and graduate students. Due to the recent furloughs, staff are forced to work less and often expected to maintain the same workload. Faculty often work 80 hours a week, with a cut in pay but no cut in time.

For the social sciences, the two biggest impacts are reduction of faculty and decreased funding for TAs, said Kyle Eischen, assistant dean of academic planning and research for the Division of Social Sciences.

“Overall, social sciences does about 40 percent of the teaching for undergraduates and about 30 percent for the graduate students,” Eischen said.

The Division of Social Sciences — which includes the psychology, economics, anthropology, sociology, politics, Latin American studies, community studies, education, legal studies, and environmental studies departments — has been hit hard by the budget crisis.

According to an administrative report published in July of 2009, the social science division is facing an approximate $1.5 million dollar cut.

“We have the most popular majors on campus, yet the cuts that were made have not been proportional to our popularity,” Eischen said.

Eischen went on to say that the reduction in funding for TAs negatively affects undergraduates and graduate students. Many graduate students support themselves by TAing.

“The quality of education for undergraduates suffers, with a less personalized education,” he said.

In particular, the psychology major — the largest major on campus, with about 1,700 enrolled students— is experiencing cuts in faculty.

According to Avril Thorne, psychology department chair, the department should have 34 full-time faculty members, but has only 25 due to the hiring freeze and the failure to replace retiring faculty. Fewer faculty means larger class sizes, which are already struggling to accommodate the increasing numbers of incoming UCSC students.

Fourth-year psychology major Olivia Leung, who works as a peer adviser in the psychology department, commented that the funding shortage has caused students to experience duress.

“The budget cuts have caused students to feel unnecessary stress and anxiety about getting into classes, as there are fewer classes available,” Leung said. “People come into the psychology department where I work as a peer adviser and stress over not getting into classes, wondering what alternatives are available for them, and how they will be able to graduate on time if they can’t take a certain class.”

Second-year psychology major Jenette Debarge is ready to take extreme measures to ensure her quality education.

“It’s to the point where I’m ready to withdraw from UCSC until I can get into a class in my major,” Debarge said. “I’m not going to give the UC my money for GEs that I don’t need.”

Even with the changing environment of the UC, psychology chair Thorne said that getting a high-quality education is still possible, if more difficult.

“I advise students to plan their courses carefully and have back-up courses to take if they can’t get into the ones they need,” Thorne said. “Also, students should be aware of the peer advising available. It is important to be nimble and flexible. You need to be a quick dancer to figure out what classes will make do for what you want to learn.”

Social sciences assistant dean Eischen agrees that despite the loss of teachers and the increasing class size, it is possible to experience a high-quality UC education with increased creativity.

“Students need to know what they want and go after it,” Eischen said. “It is still possible to get a great education here; we have fabulous faculty.”

Fourth-year Sarah Fishleder is doing just that. After returning from a study abroad program in India, Fishleder noticed that most of the classes she wanted to take in the theater arts department had been cut.

“‘Asian Drama and Dance’ and ‘Global Impacts of Dance,’ ‘Chicano Power Theater,’ ‘Black Theater USA,’ all courses I really wanted to take, are not being offered this year,” she said. “It’s indefinite; we don’t know when or if they’ll be offered again.”

Fishleder has taken things into her own hands, electing to create her own major in order to accommodate the unpredictability of the course catalogue.

Her proposed major, “Multiculturalism and the Arts Education,” is going through the approval process and is currently being reviewed for acceptance.

In addition to flexibility, Eischen said that students need to become more politically active.

“Students need to be more political, targeted specifically on making education a priority for people in California,” he said. “We all need to be more political and more active.”

Thorne agreed with Eischen by saying that the action needs to be taken on a state level.

“Parents call me complaining that their kids can’t get into any classes, and I tell them to call their legislators,” she said.

Literature chair Bassi also emphasized political action in this pressing time for UC students, and suggested finding strength in unity.

“We need to work together collaboratively, bringing different factions together for the greater common good,” Bassi said. “I advise students to talk to their professors, tell them how they feel, and find ways of letting Californians know what is at stake here. Students can go up to Sacramento, write op-eds, and make the voters of California more aware of what they are losing as a result of the budget crisis.”