Staff Editorial: Strike must not affect undergrads

This Thursday and Friday, it is likely that Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania will strike. The strike is intended to protest the University's appeal of the National Labor Relations Board's verdict that certain graduate students must be considered employees and, as such, are due certain benefits and entitlements. GET-UP has stated that the strike will include picket lines near several entrances to campus.

This is a complex issue. Members of the Penn community and even this editorial board share vastly different views on unionization, last year's election, the NLRB's decision and the University's appeal. But regardless of these differences in opinion, we are apprehensive about the potential effects of these picket lines, and we must condemn GET-UP's behavior last Friday.

We understand that they are frustrated. We understand that they believe they have waited too long for a decision in this matter. And we understand that they feel that they have been relegated to tactics like disrupting Amy Gutmann's parade out of desperation.

But that is no excuse.

The members of GET-UP who intend to picket this Thursday and Friday will put undergraduate students in an uncomfortable position. What is an undergraduate supposed to think if he or she tries to cross a picket line on the way to take a midterm, only to see the very TA that is likely to grade that midterm imploring him or her to turn around? We ask GET-UP strikers not to resort to intimidation in such a situation and thereby diminish the academic pursuits of their students and the University.

In addition, GET-UP's actions last Friday at the Board of Trustees meeting and the procession that followed were juvenile and showed extremely poor taste. That GET-UP feels it has exhausted all other efforts to be heard is unfortunate. But they should keep trying, without resorting to such disruptively zealous behavior.

As undergraduates, whether we like it or not, we are being forced to make a decision on this issue. We ask you not to treat Thursday and Friday simply as potential days off or to dismiss the actions of the strikers, but to seriously consider where you stand on these matters and act accordingly.

We would like to see a consensus reached on this issue, although it is obviously easier said than done. But we ask striking graduate students not to abuse their position as teachers and mentors and put their undergraduates in a difficult and unfair position.

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