The Issues in Today's Grad Student Strike

For the fourth time in the past five years. Harvard students are being asked to usher in the balmy days of spring by observing some sort of University strike. The Graduate Student and Teaching Fellow Union is requesting members of the Harvard-Radcliffe community to neither teach nor attend class beginning today until their strike is settled. Union picket lines will circle major classroom buildings, exhorting students and an occasional Faculty member to remain outside. The issues are complex and somewhat obscure for most undergraduates. The following summary of the dispute is intended to clarify the major points of contention.

What are the issues of the dispute?

At the heart of the dispute is the new Kraus plan for financial aid to students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The plan, which was approved in January and will be implemented in the Fall, represents a decisive break from past aid programs at the GSAS. Although most Union members would agree that in principle the plan is an improvement, they take issue with several of its provisions regarding the criteria used to allocate aid. Three of the Union's demands deal with the plan itself.

To meet these demands, Harvard would have to appropriate more money for graduate students. Two of the Union's demands attach stipulations to this additional appropriation. The organization is asking that money not be taken from either undergraduates or non-professional workers. It is also demanding that the University not finance the increased aid by cutting back the number of teaching fellows or raising the section sizes.

The remaining two Union demands are not related to financial issues. The organization is calling for educational councils to be formed in each department. The councils, which would consist of at least 50 per cent elected graduate and undergraduate students, would have the final authority to make decisions on hiring and educational policy in each department.

The Union also is demanding that it be recognized as the sole bargaining agent for graduate students, in order to counter-balance what it calls the Administration's power in decisions affecting graduate students.

The Administration is usually reticent to acknowledge the Union publicly, but it has responded obliquely to the organization's demands dealing with the Kraus plan. The response can be summed up in two words: no money. Citing declining funds from outside sources of aid, such as the Federal government and foundations, and a tight Faculty budget that only this year edged back into the black, the GSAS says it could not possibly revise the need criteria to allocate more aid to graduate students. Therefore, it does not need to answer the demands regarding the sources of the extra funds. The Administration has said nothing about either Union recognition or the educational councils, although there is little doubt it opposes them. John T. Dunlop, former dean of the Faculty, for example, said last year that collective bargaining was inappropriate in a University community.

The conflict has been joined, therefore, only around the demands, regarding the Kraus plan.

What is the Kraus plan?

The GSAS in the past distributed aid in two ways: graduate students were given Staff Tuition Scholarships (changed this year to the Tuition Abatement Program) in return for serving as teaching fellows. Graduate students could also be awarded funds by their departments based on merit. Both sources of aid were liberally supplemented by outside funding, from both the government and foundations.

This two-level system of aid functioned adequately for a long time, but the drastic decline in outside aid (which both sides acknowledge) placed stresses on it. Increasingly cut off from other sources of aid, graduate students took positions as teaching fellows to stay financially solvent. Teaching fellow ranks swelled, which the Faculty and Administration agreed led to distortions in the education process. In addition, funds from this source could not cover the burgeoning aid requirements in the GSAS, and the cry went up from many quarters for a centrally administered program that made larger awards on the basis of need alone, instead of merit.

The Kraus plan is the response to that demand, and most Union members would agree that its basic framework is an improvement over the old system. The plan ends the unstable arrangement under which graduate students would rush about at the beginning of each term to secure a teaching fellowship and thereby stave off financial disaster. The plan calculates need according to a specified formula, and promises to fund all first-and second-year graduate students to within $1000 of the calculated need. (The $1000 gap Union meetings dwindled to 20 to grants awarded in the old way by departments.) The Kraus plan will require an increase of $235,000 in the Faculty budget for GSAS scholarships.

Why is the Union not satisfied?

The Union says the Kraus plan does not go far enough. It charges the plan's provisions for calculating need are too conservative, and opposes its retention of merit-based grants.

The plan allows a student $1000 of protected assets. The Union claims this figure is too low, and that the plan makes no allowances for debts the student may have incurred. The Union demands $5000 of protected assets, and asks that debts be figured in some way in the need figure.

The Kraus plan also includes contributions from parental and spouse income before figuring student need. The Union's official demand opposes any contributions from these sources, but an explanation in the organization's leaflet circulated last week indicated some flexibility on the issue. "Some Union members would accept an aid plan which required contributions from truly wealthy parents: some are opposed in principle to any parental contributions," the statement said. Nonetheless, the statement said all Union members agree the plan as presently formulated over-taxes the parents of lower-and middle-income GSAS students, and it called upon the Administration to demonstrate that significant numbers of truly rich students are enrolled in the School. Because the plan equates the expenses of married and single students without recognizing what the Union calls significant differences, the Union opposes figuring spouse income in any way.

The Union's opposition to the merit-based $1000 differential is based on a slightly different analysis. It does not oppose this type of grant in principle, but argues that in a time when everyone is tightening his financial belt, need comes before merit and all students should be funded up to full need.

The Administration and the Faculty oppose these demands. The Administration argues, in principle, that parents and spouses should shoulder part of the burden of support for graduate students, and bolsters this argument by turning its empty pockets inside out. The financial crisis is the overriding fact facing the entire University, the argument goes, and all groups in the community must reduce their demands accordingly.

Many Faculty members favor merit-based grants. Department chairman, in fact, objected to the Kraus plan because it afforded them little leeway in granting this type of award. They say such grants are necessary to insure that the most capable students decide to come here for graduate work, and explain that if Harvard drops the grants the GSAS will be at a bidding disadvantage with other universities.

This disagreement can be decided on the merits of the two positions, but the argument that Harvard is financially strapped has drawn return fire from the Union.

Does Harvard have the money?

The Union does not deny that the University has financial problems, but argues that they stem more from its investment policy than any real shortage of funds. The Union leaflet called the policy "extraordinarily conservative," and argued that more interest from the mammoth endowment could be diverted to provide for the needs of graduate students. The Union says that Harvard received $60 million income on its investment portfolio, but only $45 million of this income and none of the capital gains were funneled into operating expenses. The endowment, therefore, grew 8 per cent last year, far out-stripping the 3.5 per cent inflation rate, the Union says. Some of this income could be applied toward the pressing needs of the University, including graduate students, the Union reasons.

Harvard takes the opposite position. It maintains that the problems of graduate students must be seen in the context of a financial crisis which is besetting the entire University, and which was recently exacerbated by the Nixon fund cutbacks. Last year, the Administration says, it channeled all $55 million of net investment income to the various Faculties. (The Union's $60 million figure does not account for various amortization and investment service charges, it says.)

Because some of the money could not be applied for the purposes for which the capital was bequeathed, it was re-invested, but for the first time, all available income was used for operating expenses. The Administration therefore denies that any large pool of funds is available.

Capital gains in the endowment are similarly restricted, the Administration says. Hale Champion, Financial vice president, yesterday estimated that in an emergency Harvard could only liquify $100 million of its $1.6 billion endowment. The rest of the endowment is restricted as to what the money can be spent for or how it can be spent.

Moreover, the Administration argues, a strong and growing endowment has enabled Harvard to weather the financial crisis thus far without resort to drastic measures, such as reducing faculty sizes. Graduate students are not the hardest hit by the crisis, and they should be willing to hold their demands in abeyance for the time being.

What will happen?

Just about anything can happen. The Union claims its back is to the wall, and says it will strike indefinitely until its demands are met, or until its membership votes to go back to work. The Administration is likely to play a waiting game for several days to see how the strike is progressing. If the work stoppage considerably slices class attendance, informal Administration overtures will probably be made to Union leaders. If, on the other hand, the strike fizzles, the Administration will wait it out, proclaiming all is well, and urging the handful of recalcitrants to return to class.

The success of the strike depends on several variables. Although the Union has called on all members of the community to neither teach nor attend class, it is expected that different groups will heed the strike call in different degrees. The overwhelming majority of the Faculty will continue to teach. Although Faculty opinion about the Union and its demands ranges from sympathetic to haughtily remote. Faculty members share a common commitment to orderly process and an abhorrence of anything that interrupts their teaching and scholarship. A handful of liberal-to-left junior Faculty will call off class, but most will not. Some conservative Faculty members, if they follow last year's pattern, may even re-schedule hour exams to penalize students observing the strike. The Union will not get any help from this quarter.

Teaching fellows are one of the keys to the strike's success. Other graduate students who support the strike will refuse to attend class, but teaching fellows will give the cause added leverage. By refusing in large numbers to teach sections, they can cripple large and middle-sized lecture courses and bring the Administration to the bargaining table. As of last week, the Union claimed that between 200 and 300 of its 600 members were teaching fellows. This figure will have to grow and most of the teaching fellows will have to stay out if the strike is to have a chance.

Undergraduates are the crucial unknown variable. If they refuse to cross picket lines in significant numbers, the Administration will have to start talking. Undergraduates for the most part observed two short work stoppages called by the Union last Spring, but the actions were preceded by more extensive barrages of leaflets than the organization has laid down this time around. Moreover, last year's actions were of short duration: Whether undergraduates will strike for a longer period of time is an open question.

If negotiations begin, they will proceed informally: The Administration will not commit itself in any way to recognizing the Union officially. John T. Dunlop, who master-minded the Administration's strategy last year, is gone, and it is unclear whether Franklin L. Ford, acting dean of the Faculty, will play a crucial role in the dispute. The Administration was bolstered last Fall when Edward T. Wilcox was appointed acting dean of the GSAS. Wilcox is a personable man who is also a skilled public performer. He is openly sympathetic to some of the Union's aims, if not its actual demands, and he is one of the people to watch in the coming days. It is likely that he will be out front for the Administration, backed behind the scenes to some extent by Ford. Because of Dunlop's departure and the interregnum in the dean's office, President Bok will probably monitor the progress of the dispute more closely than he did last year.

What happened in the past?

The Union was formed last Spring to protest a change in financial aid policy at the GSAS. It enrolled almost 1300 members, staged two successful work stoppages, and almost voted to strike to support its demands. The Union did bring a response from the other side: changes in aid policy, although not as far-reaching as the organization demanded, were implemented by the Administration. The moves helped to take the wind out of the Union's sails. The Faculty voted in addition to establish a student-Faculty Commission on Graduate Education to prepare legislation on financial aid in the GSAS for discussion by the Faculty.

As Union leaders surveyed the Spring's activities from a June vantage point, they could claim some success. They eagerly made plans for continuing the organization in the Fall.

The Union was disappointed when students came back to school in September. Its demands appeared to fall on deaf ears, and attendance at Union meetings dwindled to 20 to 30 from the 300 to 500 peaks of the preceding Spring. Although fearing the worst, the Union ran a slate of candidates for the student positions on the Commission and another body, the Committee on Graduate Education. But even though GSAS students would not come to Union meetings, a surprising amount of residual support for the organization remained. Its slate swept to victory, and Union members happily took seats on the two bodies prepared to advance their views within respectable organizations mandated by the Faculty.

An analysis of the events that followed is mired in controversy. The Kraus plan was presented to the Commission in January and the Union members objected to it, but the Administration nonetheless approved and directed that the plan be implemented.

The Union says the move was a clear violation of the spirit of the Faculty resolution that established the Commission. R. Freed Bales, professor of Social Relations and chairman of the Commission, says no such violation occurred. He says the Commission was never given final authority over aid in the GSAS. He adds that student members of the Commission were influential in drawing up the Kraus plan, and that they only decided to back out at the last minute.

At any rate, the Union decided it was getting shafted, called a general meeting for all GSAS students on February 28, and sat back to wait for a response. Two hundred students appeared at the meeting, approved the seven demands, and voted to strike if the Union's membership reached 500. That bridge was crossed last week, and strike plans pointing toward today proceed unabated.