Letters to the editor

Correcting misconceptions

To the Editor:

I write to correct two misconceptions in Lawrence Sherman's guest column ("Striking and disrupting the community over $58 an hour," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 02/23/04). The first is that the strike GET-UP proposes is over money. This is a strike for recognition, not a strike for a contract -- at the moment, there is no contract over which to strike. In other words, the source of the current conflict is the proposition that grads, as a group, have a right to participate in governing our working conditions and compensation. No one has made specific monetary demands.

The second misconception is that this is to be a generalized academic strike -- in other words, that strikers will want staff and faculty to stop doing their own work. This is not the case. If there is a strike, GET-UP members only hope that faculty and staff who wish to show solidarity will join us on the picket line whenever their schedules allow it.

Hilary Smith

SAS '09

Strike is necessary

To the Editor:

As the proud member of a union household, I was disheartened to see the DP's recent editorial ("Strike must not affect undergrads," DP, 02/23/04) urging the potential strike by GET-UP to not affect undergraduate students. In fact, the DP went so far as to say that it was unfair of the graduate students' union to attempt to disrupt daily operations here on campus.

If the DP holds this position, then I respectfully urge them to write editorials condemning just about every union effort in history. Unions cannot work without power, and the only power that a group of hard-working individuals going against the establishment has is this disruption. Strikes are effective, necessary measures taken by those that have no other recourse. Based upon the administration's current hard-line, reactionary position to merely counting the votes, I am not surprised that GET-UP has resorted to these drastic measures. And for those that say a Penn education is too expensive for strikes, I can only hope they try to see the whole picture in this situation. Simply because an undergraduate student, including myself, pays a certain sum for every class, that doesn't entitle him to ignore the needs of his older colleagues.

I am looking forward to the actions taken by GET-UP. Indeed, I hope they send the most important message to the Penn community and administration: The voice of workers and democratic action cannot be ignored.

Joshua Kruger

College '06

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