I spent the afternoon of April 21 sitting at a plastic table in an eighth floor Campus Center conference room to observe a bargaining meeting between University of Massachusetts management and the Graduate Employee Organization, which is the union that represents graduate student workers on our campus. For those who don’t know, GEO’s contract protects the rights and working conditions of the people who grade most of our papers and exams and teach many of our classes. I should be upfront about my take on the matter: I am deeply pro-union, and if you’re interested in having a decent college life here at UMass, I think you ought to join me.

Graduate students at this University often live on poverty wages. Their health benefits are inadequate. Their workloads change drastically from semester to semester. Their right to make decisions about their reproduction is curtailed by the meager parental leave offered by the University, and many cannot be secure in the knowledge that they will be employed year to year. They are overworked, underfunded and frequently disrespected by the administration.

Under these conditions, graduate students are expected to provide us with all of the attention and intellectual labor we need to grow as scholars and citizens. The majority of classes taught to incoming students are taught by graduate students. Discussion sections, one of the only spaces we have to talk in a reasonably sized group about courses with enrollment in the hundreds, are led by graduate students. They are one of the most consistent, important parts of our classroom experience. Surely, I thought, a University that trumpets from every piece of promotional material that “UMatter at UMass” would be interested in making sure that its graduate students can put their all into teaching the undergraduate population.

Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case. I’m friendly with most of the GEO bargaining team, and I’ve overheard complaints of disrespect from the representatives of the University, but I was not prepared for what I walked in on.

The meeting was scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Management arrived 20 minutes late, which resulted in several members of GEO having to leave to teach classes before having the opportunity to look them in the eye. When I was introduced to the University’s representatives as an undergraduate student to support the union, expressions of mild terror swept their faces. They left the room, and then pulled GEO’s leadership into the hallway and demanded to know if I was a reporter for the Collegian. My impression is that, if I had been, I would have been asked to leave. We all need to be worried when people in positions of authority in our school quake at the thought of their behavior at the bargaining table being broadcast to the public.

Sitting in on the bargaining session was something like watching the Super Bowl: for every five minutes of actual discussion between the opposing sides, management spent 10 in another room, apparently arguing amongst themselves as the graduate students sat idle. The meeting stretched for two hours. In that period, I think I saw half an hour of discussion. In that half hour, maybe half of management’s behavior could be called bargaining and not petty bullying.

During a discussion of the union’s request that they be notified of any meeting where employees were being informed of changes to their scheduling or workload, one of the members of the bargaining team explained that, per the union’s Weingarten rights, union members are legally entitled to have a union representative with them at those meetings. This did not sit well with Professor John McCarthy, Dean of the Graduate School, who proceeded to harangue the bargaining team member for “lecturing” management and his “disrespectful” tone. I’ve personally seen students in grade school behave better under pressure, and it was shocking to see an adult in a position of authority explode at someone who was effectively helping him avoid legal trouble.

Throughout this meeting, I was frequently reminded of the disrespect, evasion and lack of transparency that the administration uses when it addresses the undergraduate student population. Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy offered us 20 minutes in a public forum to talk about racist death threats scrawled on the doors of students of color. The University spent millions of dollars on luxury dorms for the prestige students in the Honors College, while I’ve watched my friends drop like flies under mounting debts.

This University runs on the exploitation of its graduate students and the stolen futures of its undergraduates. The struggle of the graduate students is against an enemy we hold in common. Which side are you on?

Mason Weiser is a Collegian contributor and can be reached at [email protected].