A Force For Change

No one goes to graduate school to get rich, or even to have a particularly good time. Dissatisfaction seems to be the doctoral candidate’s God-given right; we hoist giant chips onto our shoulders with sardonic pride and carry them around for years. At some schools, however, such as Yale, the chips have become too much to bear alone—and graduate students are unionizing in order to ease the burden.

In a perfect world, graduate student unionization would be unnecessary. Young people would go to graduate school to realize their potential as great scholars and teachers. They would be introduced to teaching through apprenticeships, in which they would gradually learn the craft—and maybe even the art—of teaching.

Alas, universities today are not that perfect. At its most imperfect, the apprenticeship model has been perverted into a cheap labor source for the university. In a difficult economy, graduate students are forced to supplement meager stipends with more teaching-assistant work, little of which is managed in the apprentice-like manner it is supposed to be. Working long hours just to make ends meet, with little job security from one semester to the next, it is no surprise that graduate students across the country are turning to a historically successful method for improving working conditions.

Unionization! The word strikes fear into the hearts of administrators. Yet it seems doubtful that Harvard’s graduate students will ever unionize. Even though graduate study at Harvard hardly resembles the pedagogical ideal, it is not the bottom of the heap, either. Rumor has it that we are paid somewhat better than our peers at many other universities, and a little extra cash can go a long way to quelling discontent. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) administration has made great improvements in the financial packages awarded to incoming students, which also takes some of the edge off. While there are certainly pockets of discontent and sub-par working conditions for Harvard graduate students, things are not quite bad enough to generate widespread protest.

But in addition to the money, the culture of the academic world and particularly that of Harvard mitigates against graduate student unionization. To put it bluntly, graduate students here are too self-absorbed to work for something that might benefit their greater good. I don’t mean this as critically as it sounds. In the academy, the only product we have to sell is ourselves when we go on the job market. To this end, we must focus as completely as possible on our own work because the final product has just our name on it. The unintended result of such rigorous individual effort is a narrow focus on our own situation, with little time or energy left over for the common good. Why should I waste my time worrying about everyone else when it is so hard just to promote myself?

Why? Because it is the right thing to do. Graduate students must realize that we are an integral part of the university community, and that we have a right to have our interests acknowledged and protected. This is not just about getting better benefits, or being paid more. The point of looking up from our books or our microscopes once in a while is to remind ourselves that we do not exist in an academic vacuum. Listening to each other, and learning how we can work together to benefit both ourselves and the academic community of this University are critical not only to our professional development, but to our personal growth as well. We must, in effect, get over ourselves in order to get ahead. Whether we do this by unionizing or by utilizing existing channels of communication, the point is to make our voice heard.

There are key steps that the GSAS administration could take in response to student dissatisfaction that would improve graduate student working conditions at Harvard. Most importantly, the GSAS administration must not run scared of the supposedly all-powerful academic departments, and must take a leadership role in improving graduate student work conditions by developing a set of recommendations for departments in the areas of teaching fellow hiring and training. Departments should streamline the hiring process by centralizing the administrative aspects within each department, and clarifying hiring practices. Finally, the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning does a good job training first-time teaching fellows, but departments must be more involved in this preparation, offering specialized training in class leading, advising and grading. Such efforts would go a long way to improving the conditions for graduate student workers at Harvard.

Should Harvard’s graduate students unionize? To tell the truth, I don’t know what unionization would accomplish, although I am open to learning more. But the movement is so quiet right now that it is not convincing many students of the need for such action. Will we unionize? Don’t count on it. Until we wake up and recognize our community responsibility, Harvard’s graduate students will never coalesce into a potent force for change.

Lisa L. Laskin, a doctoral candidate in the Department of History, is a former president of the GSAS Graduate Student Council.