Letters to the editor

GET-UP detrimental

To the Editor:

Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania's decision to strike this midterm week would be worth a good laugh if the implications of the situation were not so sad. Undergraduates are not the only victims in this petty display of ungrateful petulance; so are the faculty, who have done nothing to deserve the disruption of their classes and now find themselves silenced on the issue. Most of all, my fellow graduate students are protesting to the detriment of their own education and professionalism.

As a full-time graduate student, a teaching assistant for one class, a Writing Across the University fellow for another and a graduate associate in one of the dorms, I do not feel that I need to be recognized as an "employee" any more than I already am. Like most of the graduate students who threaten to strike, I have a generous, University-funded fellowship, many devoted professors who freely share their time and wisdom, and a wonderful and nurturing department. Undertaking graduate study is a unique educational opportunity, not a way of life. Being a member of Penn's vibrant intellectual community is a privilege, not a right. Let us hope that enough of my graduate student cohort can remember these simple facts and place their responsibilities to students, teachers and themselves ahead of any fabricated sense of self-entitlement.

Alex Novikoff

SAS '06

To the Editor:

I write this letter from my office four floors above a street corner where 10 graduate students are marching about in a circle and chanting their strike mantras.

The simple fact is, those people marching on the sidewalk and carrying the signs are students. They're students of a world-class, Ivy League university who are being paid to learn. They are being paid to pursue that highest of human callings -- knowledge. To liken the cause of a University of Pennsylvania graduate student to those of a "laborer" is irresponsible and an offense to what labor really is and what education is all about. I don't mean to diminish the right of a human being to stand up for his or her needs. But what I do want to say is that they -- graduate students at an elite university -- have a responsibility to ask to have their needs met in ways that are responsible and respectful of their station and privilege.

The difference between the plight of a graduate student and a true laborer is that a graduate student has options: The salaries a graduate student has available to her, both now and in the future, are far larger than those a "laborer" can ever hope to have. If graduate students really think so little of their station, if they really think the work they do -- the pursuit of knowledge -- is akin to laboring just to get by, then hasn't their education failed?

Natasha Mitchell

University employee

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