Union may bring changes to classes

While elections for graduate student unionization loom in the not-so-distant future, uncertainties regarding its possible effects on undergraduate education dance through the minds of Penn's faculty. With the vote scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday of this week, the results could have a direct effect on both the faculty who depend on teaching assistants and the students who learn from them. Employed in a teaching capacity, graduate students often lead small recitation sections to supplement larger lectures. Within the English department, they may even teach introductory writing courses of their own. "We just don't know how this long process will affect the delicate balance of mutual trust and cooperation built up between graduate students and faculty over the years," explained David Wallace, chairman of the English Department. Wallace added that just as questions remain about how the relationship between employed graduate students and faculty might change, so do questions concerning how such a move may alter the environment of teaching assistant-led courses and recitation sections. "We do not quite know how these changes would affect the experience of undergraduates in the classroom," Wallace noted. Though the vote is taking place due to a November ruling made by the National Labor Relations Board, its results will only be released if the NLRB dismisses the administration's appeal against the original ruling. According to Political Science Department Chairman Jack Nagel, while unionization is still only a possibility, some effects of the process can already be seen. Nagel said that since the move for unionization began, there has been an "uncoupl[ing] of graduate student funding from the teaching needs of departments." He added that this separation of funds within departments limits the amount that can be devoted to the payment of graduate students in teaching positions. While one of the central goals of Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania -- the organization heading the unionization movement -- is an increase in wages, Nagel explained that such an increase will "lessen the number" of such unionized graduate students that any given department will be able to hire. The professor said he was "concerned" that due to these funding limits, departments would search outside of the graduate student pool in order to fill vacant teaching positions in a more economical manner, creating a "two-tiered work force" consisting of graduate students who are unionized and teachers who are "wage laborers." But Nagel also noted that a graduate student union would provide an equalization in graduate student working conditions across all departments. Mathematics Department Chairman Julius Shaneson echoed Nagel's sentiments regarding the future employment of unionized graduate students. "Our graduate program is designed to train students for a career in research and teaching mathematics," Shaneson wrote in an e-mail. "If we have to view the grad students more as employees, then when hiring them and deciding to continue them in our program, we would have to evaluate them with regard to teaching as one evaluates employees rather than as one evaluates and critiques students... in a learning process." Shaneson noted that he is uncertain whether this "would be beneficial to [such graduate students] or to the undergraduates they teach in the long run." Shaneson added that while he believes that the "basic parameters involved in graduate student teaching would probably stay pretty much the same even with unionization," the union could choose to enforce rules which "might limit flexibility." He cited an example of the extension of office hours during testing periods. "Around exam times, TAs will often choose to offer extra office hours to help students, something that under union rules might be discouraged or even disallowed," Shaneson said. Though much is still unknown, English Department Graduate Student Chairwoman Margreta de Grazia echoed resounding feelings of reticence regarding the future. Offering no predictions of her own, she explained that "in the absence of precedents, it is difficult to even speculate." De Grazia noted, however, that "every effort will be made in [any] case to assure that the quality of undergraduate teaching will continue at its same, high level."

Penn votes: The union debate

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