Letters to the Editor: How UC has exploited the student academic workers on strike
How UC has exploited the student academic workers on strike by David Beito
Since early October, the UC system, as well as faculty unions and the administration, has been engaged in a public relations blitz aimed at discrediting the student unions, thereby making students afraid to continue activism and supporting strike action to defend their union and academic standards. All the while, the administration and faculty unions have worked to make students’ lives more difficult and the student academic union — by portraying it as a union of students, not of academic workers, and thus unable to protect the student academic workers, which should be the focus of the public relations blitz.
The administration and faculty have been engaged in a war against the student academic union and this offensive may have included sending a private investigator looking at the student academic union’s emails to determine whether it was the students who made the emails. As we know, there was nothing illegal or improper with what the UC system was doing.
Yet, it was only by the grace of the student academic union that the students knew about the private investigation and the UC university system could continue with their campaign against the student academic unions.
The UC system and the faculty unions have made students fear, even hate, their unions and even though the UC system and the faculty unions have been engaged in a public relations blitz at the point of a gun in the form of a public relations blitz aimed at discrediting the student unions, yet the students continue to support and fight for the student academic unions even though the UC system has repeatedly and consistently attacked and undermined the student academic unions, including the recent “threat” on the student academic union’s website, threatening the students’ academic freedom and academic unions.
At this point, it is time for the UC system to stop using its public relations blitz as a weapon against the student academic workers and for the UC system to stop using the students as pawns and stop using the students as its mouthpieces.
The UC system, the faculty unions and the administration will continue to use the students as its mouthpieces, and yet the students will continue to support and defend the student academic workers, even at the very expense of their academic freedom.
David Beito, PhD
Santa Cruz, CA
