<p>all students and PARENTS should email John Sexton , and tell him to negotiate, end this nonsense
<a href="mailto:john.sexton@nyu.edu">john.sexton@nyu.edu</a></p>
<p>Negotiate what?</p>
<p>They get full tuition remission, health benefits, and a $19,000 stipend... </p>
<p>...What on earth do they want?</p>
<p>actually, their health benefits have been cut since the contract expired, and not only is $19,000 not NEARLY enough money to be paid for all the work they do, it is practically impossible to live on in NYC...try doing their jobs AND look up the cost of apartments...</p>
<p>i personally defend the grad students because of john sexton's totally ignorant attitude towards the situation...he has even been approached by professors about the situation and not changed a thing...he is the only person with the power to fix things and idk what he plans on doing...</p>
<p>...but DanielJ, how much would you want to do the same job? enlighten us</p>
<p>um your forgetting something katrina, they are STUDENTS. </p>
<p>the arguement "how are they going to live on $19,000 a year" is faulty, because basically we, as undergrads, are "living" on negative 34k a year.
med students, law students, etc all have to take out huge sums of money , grad student should be no different. They work 15-20 hours a week, for about 7 monthes a year, and get the equivalence of 50k+ a year....nyc full time teachers dont even make that much! and if yuo do the math, youi'll see there making the equivalence of $70 an hour (before someone says im doing fault math, remember they get 3 weeks off for christmas, and 4 monthes off in summer) for a job thats not all that difficult. </p>
<p>the health care cost going up is nominal and is merely paying more for a premium, something that is just a by product of rising health costs, my mother works for the IRS, and they have higher premiums also. </p>
<p>tho this is all aside from the point, there arguing over the right to unionize, not over pay, the right to unionize is seen as a preventive measure to stop nyu from screwing them over later on, not because of current grievances</p>
<p>i do not support them to unionize because a) there already getting overpaid b) i view them as primarily students c) if nyu does screw them over, then fine go unionize, the uwa isnt going anywhere...but nyu has promised pay increases equal to what the contract wouldve given d) the union is screwing with academic matters, such as moaning about nyu hiring columbia students, among other things.... all of which will make us have to pay more </p>
<p>and for people who try to contend they are more than students acting as part time workers.....just remember, most of us in undergrad work just as hard for 1/10th there pay.</p>
<p>How about emailing the striking grad students instead of Sexton? Now, there's a plan. These individuals are students, first and foremost.</p>
<p>I agree with Mattistotle and Matth. These grad students are pretty loony. NYU should show some courage and crush this union. </p>
<p>Treexoxo--Nobody has forced the grad students to come to NYU. If they can't afford to live in Manhattan, that's their fault, undergrads at NYU seem to be just fine without a union and their costs are the same. This strike is simply about greed and whining on the part of some grad. students. </p>
<p>The "strikers" are too short sighted to realize a union would actually harm more than helping in the long run. I'd venture most econ. and math grad students would be against the strike since they realize unions raise cost for no reason and take away incentive to achieve by protecting the mediocre.</p>
<p>ouch, what happened to that liberal spirit at NYU, you have all turned into Republicans, our country was made great by Organized Labor, something that gets lost today in the mentality of greed</p>
<p>"you have all turned into Republicans"</p>
<p>I'm a NYU alumnus, and I always WAS republican, there was no transformation in my case. NYU has plenty of non-liberals, though as this strike demonstrates, the lefties tend to be more vocal. However, this isn't about right and left, it's about right and wrong.</p>
<p>"our country was made great by Organized Labor"</p>
<p>Not really. Organized labor has had a lot of mob ties, meddled in many democratic processes (think political machines), increased many capital costs and it's debateable at best how much of a positive impact it's had. Regardless of how you feel about this, comparing affluent NYU grad students who dwell in the ivory tower to blue collar workers is a slap in face to those who engage in hard PHYSICAL labor. </p>
<p>"something that gets lost today in the mentality of greed"</p>
<p>I couldn't agree more, tell that to the striking grad students who get free tuition, $19K a year for part time work, and other intangible benefits and still aren't satisfied--if that isn't greed, I don't know what is.</p>
<p>Your entire post demonstrates how weak and shallow the argument in support for this cause is.</p>
<p>mob ties, not at the beginning of Organized Labor, just at the end, and I due credit the mob with 1/2 the blame for brining down the unions(the mob took over and stole the members money, kinds like Enron), but I blame the politicans for the other half. Look what Reagean did to the Air Traffic Controllers, pure union busting.</p>
<p>"Look what Reagean did to the Air Traffic Controllers, pure union busting."</p>
<p>God bless that man. One can only hope Sexton follows in those footsteps.</p>
<p>FYI, the air traffic controllers that Reagan fired had taken an OATH not to strike and were in clear violation of that promise (talk about unethical). Reagan did the politically unpopular thing and was a brave leader because of it. Reagan's actions suceeded in destroying the plague of mob infested organized labor and were no doubt the right way to go in the long run.</p>
<p>Actually, njgirl, I'm not a Republican but I'm also not a fan of unions, especially in the case of privileged grad students. I'd love to hear how our country 'was made great by organized labor'. While unions may have had their place to fix the ills of the industrial revolution, their need is no longer obvious. People are not working in sweatshops, children aren't indentured to evil employers. What unions succeed in doing today is to celebrate and reward mediocrity in the workplace, while piling up huge accounts of union dues, allowing the union leaders to live the high life. Performance standards don't matter, maintaining the union status quo does. If you disbelieve the ties to the mob, do some research on a gent named Hoffa. Like I said, these grad students are students first. They have no business disrupting the education of undergrads with their nonsense.</p>
<p>guess you haven't heard of Walmart, they could sure use a union, large groups of workers, working in large corporations usually do better with union representation, why can't Walmart be more like Starbucks, and give workers MORE, not LESS, than they are compelled to provide?</p>
<p>oh and JW, Reagan was as ass that believed that AIDS was a punishment to gay men and Haitians, what grammar school student doesn' know that germs can't morally discriminate?</p>
<p>"Reagan was as ass that believed that AIDS was a punishment to gay men and Haitians"</p>
<p>You have evidence for that in the form of an unbiased link or did he tell you this personally?</p>
<p>He did nothing about Aids in the 80's when he could have made a big difference in the current outcome of the disease, and yes it is factual that he did nothing because the disease first affected gay men. I will dig up the research if you want, but he wasn't this Republican god peolple have made him out to be. Reaganomics also sucked, and people paid a huge price for it in the late 80's early 90's. But back to the argument at hand, why do some of you portray these graduate students as pampered pets, when they are slaves to the univesity and the professors that use they to teach class and grade exams. Why do some compare them to undergrads, when there resposbilities are really quite different. I don't know one undergrad that has the responsibility of a TA, they are just here to go to school, not support a prof and department. And who says they are all rich? If they have full health benefits why did Sexton say there was a $200,000 fund to help them out if they have large medical bills. Don't believe everything you hear, from any source. And Reagan was a ass.</p>
<p>treeexoxo, I would gladly do the work of a GA for the tuition remission <em>without</em> any stipend. Since when were students (<em>these</em> students in particular, it seems) entitled to complete financial security during their school-years? I guess it's a nice notion, but it doesn't make much sense as long as the rest of us are the one's bearing the brunt of their actions. </p>
<p>In my own studies, I am preparing to be a high school teacher. So, basically (also, while I am a student), I will in my own training be doing the same thing as the GAs - in another setting, without pay, without union recognition, without fanfare, and without politics. While I'm a student, I don't expect to be raking in enough money to be able to make it in NYC. That's just ridiculous. </p>
<p>And again, as someone paying tens of thousands dollars a year in tuition (for a top-quality education, of course), I see absolutely no point in wasting my time protesting alongside another student with full tuition remission and a $19,000 stipend for only 20 hours (or less) of relevant work.</p>
<p>Furthermore, I find it obscene that these students have such little respect for anyone else that they spend their time whistling, cackling, scraping cheese graters, shrieking, and boogeying outside of the library where people are trying to get some work done. </p>
<p>As is so often at NYU, it's just about finding a good opportunity to let your hair down and make a scene, but all, of course, in a very quasi-political manner, "protesting" and wreaking havoc.... for a "cause".</p>
<p>im pro-union, extremely left leaning democrat.....just this union and strike is THAT retarded...I mean id prefer "under god" out of the pledge of allegiance, and i dont even support this strike.</p>
<p>Thats NYU for you; give them cause, no matter how shallow, and they'll give a picket line in return. </p>
<p>I'm going to avoid the current drama around Regan, AIDS, and the joys of Jimmy Hoffa, and stick the topic at hand. Allow me, if you will, to present my undergraduate senior year, 2nd semester schedule:</p>
<p>Monday- Studio: 9:00am - 10:10pm, with an hour off for lunch, and 15 mintues to get from my last class in studio (16th and 10 ave), to my 3 1/2 hour Special Effects at the Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film & Television on Broadway.</p>
<p>Tuesday- Recitation for an hour and 15 minutes.</p>
<p>Wednesday- Studio: 9:00am - 6:00pm</p>
<p>Thursday off</p>
<p>Friday- Studio: 9:45 am - 6:45pm</p>
<p>Now this was the first time, in two years, that I was able to actually have a day off,which of course was the last, as I was in studio all day from M-F during my final, summer semester, and the only semester when I didn't have additional non-studio classes on my off-studio days. And anyone in Tisch-Drama will tell you that our studios might count for 8 credits, but we take enough classes that, if done on a per-class basis, would alone equal up to 20+ credits. This doesn't include the many, many hours of rehearsal, homework, ECs, etc. </p>
<p>NYU was a full time job, with overtime. For the art student at least, it wasn't just sitting down in a classroom chair, soaking up the knowledge. It was hands on in every way imaginable. And yet, all I recieved was a $4,000 scholarship, and $5,000 in work study (which I simply had credited toward my tuition instead of working). Other kids got more, but many recieved less, and several people I know were working even harder, especially the double majors. </p>
<p>I'd love to see one of these grad students step to me, me who is almost a 100k in debt because I chose to study at NYU, just like them, chose to undertake a crazy work schedule, to live in an insanely expensive city, and argue how free tuition, a 19k "stipend", and other perks, aren't enough to compensate for their apparently tortured existence.</p>
<p>$19,000 is NOT enough for grad students considering how some of them are married and have families to support (as well as expensive nyc apartments to pay rent for). a lot of these students are doctoral candidates around their 30's! they have to be making more money than that.</p>
<p>the real issue isn't really the amount of their stipend. when clinton was in office, unions were negotiated with because unions offer PROTECTION. under a graduate student union in 1995, the grad students received much higher pay increases and enough health benefits. they have to pay a lot of money from their own pockets for medication now. no co-pay at all. it's an issue of rights and protection! </p>
<p>grad students, contrarily, have a lot to do. depending on how many recitations they lead, they have at least 20 midterms to grade. these aren't just regular high school or scantron tests. these can be full papers or long-winded response kind of tests. most of them also assign work in their recitations. they take a long time to grade. they also have to keep up with the same curriculum the students are keeping up with while balancing writing their dissertation and taking classes. grad students who are TA's are the labor that keeps nyu academics running. without them, many large classes (that happen to be required) wouldn't have grades to give.</p>
<p>john sexton is issuing an ultimatum and it's mainly because he wants the workhorses back in their positions in time for finals! he doesn't care about their rights. he was never a professor or a TA. </p>
<p>although u can argue that unions may be obsolete now because of labor laws...what labor laws protect NYU grad students? TA's got paid only around $12,000 10 years ago when the grad union first came into contract.</p>