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The University of California, Santa Cruz, fired 54 graduate student employees from their teaching positions on Friday (February 28), in the latest escalation of a months-long dispute over student pay, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reports. The students, who have been on strike since December after the university resisted requests to increase pay to better match the area’s cost of living, had refused to return thousands of grades from the fall quarter—actions that the university has strongly criticized.
“Your abandonment and sustained willful dereliction of your job responsibilities as a Teaching Fellow constitutes serious misconduct,” reads the dismissal letter, signed by the UCSC’s acting vice provost and dean of graduate studies, Quentin Williams. It continues, “Your conduct has harmed graduate students and disrupted University operations.”
In addition to the 54 students who received dismissal letters, a further 28 who also failed to return grades received notices ...
