Protesters seek presidential rendezvous

"Amy, don't you run away, listen to what we have to say!"

This was just one of many chants that could be heard on Locust Walk yesterday as about 55 graduate student protesters, led by a ten-foot tall puppet of Amy Gutmann, converged on College Hall at 12:30 p.m.

The protest was organized by Graduate Employees Together - University of Pennsylvania, a graduate-student group formed in 2001 that advocates for graduate-student teachers and research assistants at Penn.

Participants in the protest hoped to convince Amy Gutmann to finally meet with members of GET-UP and discuss their problems face to face.

The protest commemorated "a letter that Amy Gutmann had written to the former president of GET-UP saying that she would meet with GET-UP and work with them on some of their concerns," said Walt Hakala, a third-year School of Arts and Sciences graduate student and member of GET-UP.

He said that Gutmann wrote the letter while she was still a professor at Princeton, before she became president of Penn.

Now, GET-UP is looking for some results.

"We've been trying to talk to her for two years," said Stefan Heumann, a third-year SAS graduate student and current GET-UP treasurer. "We're tired of running after her."

Gutmann herself declined to comment on the protest, but University spokeswoman Lori Doyle wrote in an e-mail that Gutmann "wrote to GET-UP in July 2004 making clear that they should work with the 'existing Penn graduate student structure that has served the University and its graduate students well over the years.'"

Gutmann continues to offer that same advice, Doyle said.

But some graduate students find Gutmann's position hypocritical.

She "writes all these books about deliberative democracy and how you have to sit down with people and how a democratic institution should be based on people having conversations and solving our issues together," said Tatjana Scheffler, a fourth-year SAS graduate student and GET-UP secretary.

Scheffler said that, by not meeting with GET-UP, Gutmann is not practicing what she preaches.

To convey this point, graduate students carried a ten-foot tall puppet of Gutmann in front of them as they marched down Locust Walk.

As GET-UP co-chairwoman Julie Kruidenier manned the megaphone, leading protesters through a printed list of chants, other protestors held signs and distributed fliers to passersby that detailed their cause.

The protest was also scheduled to commemorate the fourth anniversary of a graduate student vote to unionize, held Feb. 26, 2003.

GET-UP has long been a supporter of a graduate student union, classifying TAs and research assistants as University employees.

Federal law, however, is not on their side.

In 2004, the National Labor Relations Board voted not to define graduate students as employees, meaning they don't have an enforceable right to unionize. Specifically, this vote meant that Penn - a private university governed by federal law - did not have to recognize efforts to form a graduate student union.

After the NLRB ruling, Penn decided not to count the votes cast by graduate students, at least temporarily eliminating hopes for a union.

But GET-UP members are still advocating, insisting that a union would be beneficial to Penn TAs and research assistants.

"The idea behind a union is that you have collective bargaining rights," Hakala said. "Instead of one person going and asking for something, a large group can do that."

But at the end of the day, GET-UP is primarily hopeful for that first meeting.

"For today, I would be happy if Amy Gutmann finally agrees to meet with us," Scheffler said.

Comments (14)

SHUT - UP Stop Hurting Undergraduate Teaching - University of Pennsylvania.

[QUOTE id="8b058da3-ede1-4bd5-a420-5803dc70226e"]SHUT - UP Stop Hurting Undergraduate Teaching - University of Pennsylvania.[/QUOTE] GET-UP does not represent the majority of graduate students. Most of us actually took the time to read all of the things that we agreed to (funding amounts, healthcare arrangements, teaching workload, etc) when deciding to go to grad school at Penn, rather than getting here and deciding that we were entitled to more money and less work. Furthermore, GET-UP regularly antagonizes graduate students, making house calls, phone calls, and aggressively attempting to recruit us into their little club. Most graduate students are hard-working and dedicated, and I am a bit dismayed at being constantly represented to the Penn public by this small (yet unfortunately vocal) group of whiny hippies.

[QUOTE id="8b058da3-ede1-4bd5-a420-5803dc70226e"]SHUT - UP Stop Hurting Undergraduate Teaching - University of Pennsylvania.[/QUOTE] Very nice well researched and eloquent opinion. The depth of your knowledge regarding this issue is demonstrated very well by your consise and clearly deeply though out rebuttal.

When I was admited to Penn we didn't get the health plan covered. I thought that was stupid, but I still came. If I think that the compensation for my work should include covered health insurance why shouldn't I try to negotiate with my employer to get it? I came to Penn because I wanted to work with a great research group, but that doesn't mean that I didn't also want a better stipend than they originally offered. Just because you don't like the status quo in terms of grad school stipends doesn't mean you shouldn't go. I came, I rallied, and I got health care (in 2001). For six and a half years I got to work with my great research group, and for five of those years my insurance was covered - win win as far as I'm concerned. If Bush hadn't been elected and the NLRB hadn't made it's bogus decision I would have probably gotten paid more (because GET-UP would have been recognized), and left grad school debt free. That would have been even better. There's more than "love it or leave it". There's also "change it".

GET-UP should get lost. it is unfair for some graduate students to receive extra compensation (i.e. health insurance for dependents) because they have decided to marry or have children. I'm a grad student; why should I make less than Walt simply because I'm single. We can all elect to buy additional coverage for our spouses/children on the private market. It would be nice if Penn offered us the right to BUY extra coverage for dependents, but it makes no sense for Penn to give such coverage for free. All grad students would be better off with higher stipends, but it is self-centered for GET-UP to demand extra benefits for only married students and student parents.

SHUT-UP is right

[QUOTE id="71b40c3d-952f-4b94-adf7-6f1cf9d9655d"] There's more than "love it or leave it". There's also "change it".[/QUOTE] There's also "change nothing, make an ass out of yourself, and waste a lot of people's time (including the undergrads who actually pay to come here)." We have gotten healthcare and my own stipend has increased almost every year that I have been at Penn, and there is absolutely no evidence that GET-UP had anything to do with any of those changes. And I will reiterate my point that going into a bad deal thinking that you will be able to renegotiate the conditions is not very realistic. All graduate students accepted Penn's conditions when they agreed to come here, and should take personal responsibility for that decision.

Dawn of time -> 2000-2001 academic year: grad students pay for their own health insurance. GET-UP starts organizing in early 2001 2001-2002 academic year -> now: health insurance is included. Yeah, now that's obviously just a coincidence, isn't it...

GET-UP needs to GET REAL! You are students, NOT faculty or staff!

[QUOTE id="faccc478-0e68-4342-aafe-1a06d05cc657"]Dawn of time -> 2000-2001 academic year: grad students pay for their own health insurance. GET-UP starts organizing in early 2001 2001-2002 academic year -> now: health insurance is included. Yeah, now that's obviously just a coincidence, isn't it...[/QUOTE] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_is_causation_%28fallacy%29 Welcome to graduate school, where we don't make unfounded statements just because they sound good.

Now, I wonder how much that giant puppet of Amy Gutmann cost. Because folks, the 10th year "history PhD candidates" who run GET-UP force a union shop across all departments, guess where your union dues will be going. The comment above is right. The people who have the time to do important things like make 10-ft puppets and play protester are precisely not the people who are busy doing trivial, though time-consuming things like math, science, and engineering, which for one reason or another don't lend themselves so much to loud, obnoxious, immature belly-aching the way ten years of *self-(evidently) important* study in the history and sociology departments lets you do. In the words of many-a-grumpy old man: Get a real job you damned hippies, and get off my lawn!

Perhaps harassing Amy at her inauguration ceremony was NOT the best way to start their relationship off on the right foot...

NOT ONLY FREE EDUCATION AND STIPEND YOU GUYS COMPLAIN? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? YOU ARE NOT FACULTY!!!!!!! SHUT UP YOU EMBARRAS OUR UNIVERSITY. IF YOU DO NOT LIKE IT (TRUST ME WE HAVE ENOUGH TA'S)

Timeline: your timeline has a couple of errors in it. Let me fill in some details. Dawn of time -> 2000-2001 academic year: grad students pay for their own health insurance. Late 2000: GSAC and GAPSA start working with administration on a new insurance plan, in large part at the administration's request as they realize that insurance costs are going to rise significantly the following year for a number of reasons out of their control. Beginning of 2001: GET-UP (allegedly) starts organizing, but doesn't make themselves known to the general graduate student population, let alone the administration. March 2001: Administration announces that health insurance will now be paid for under certain conditions. April 2001: GET-UP announces their existence to the world, immediately taking credit for decisions that had already been made. May 2001: GSAC and GAPSA work with administration to pay for even more health insurance in even more relaxed conditions. While there may be a germ of truth to the fact that the vague spectre of the possibility of unionization made the University more willing to move on health insurance than they had been before, there were a number of other issues involved and a lot of hard work done by a lot of people while the GET-UP founders were busy coming up with a not-so-clever acronym. And then GET-UP swooped in and started taking credit. And that is just one reason why GET-UP are annoying.

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