San Diego

“My name is Beril Polat and I am a 4th year Chemical Engineering Ph.D. student in the Nanoengineering Department. I am an international student from Turkey. Two years into my studies, I realized I wasn’t in a financially transparent workplace and was kept in the dark about my future funding and research projects. After a phase of talking with a lot of friends and family, I decided to change my research lab and advisor. The process wasn’t as smooth as I thought it was going to be, and made me see the lack of support from the department and the university. Therefore, I support forming a Student Researcher union so that researchers like me can have written, enforceable rights and not be kept in the dark.” – Beril Polat

“My name is Conor O’Herin, and I am a Graduate Student Researcher in Chemistry & Biochemistry at UC San Diego. I believe the protections we can negotiate by forming a union are the only way to ensure a workplace that is free of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. Without the security of a transparent, legally binding contract, we will continue to be pushed to work in unhealthy and unsafe environments and forced to rely on informal and unreliable promises from the university. Establishing a union ensures our voices will be heard and is an important step towards establishing a more inclusive and diverse research community.” – Conor O’Herin

“My name is Michelle Franc Ragsac, and I am a GSR in Bioinformatics & Systems Biology at UCSD studying early embryogenesis and genome regulation in Ciona intestinalis. I believe that forming a GSR union would provide collective power for all workers in the UC system, including those that are the most vulnerable. I’ve both heard about and experienced some of the uninclusive attitudes that graduate students face from the upper echelons of the university administration to one’s thesis advisor. While some of these encounters are assumed to be a part of a “normal” graduate student experience, I believe that they highlight the unjust power dynamics that are at play against trainees. Union representation would empower us to provide support and protections for all graduate students from harassment, discrimination, or equity issues, while also fostering a more inclusive training environment for our community.” – Michelle Franc Ragsac

“I am a Graduate Student Researcher in the Nanoengineering Department studying infectious disease diagnostics. When my PI moved to a different school, I ended up working for an entire Summer without pay in order to transition to a new lab. As an international student, I could never have imagined that there would be so little support for students in situations similar to mine. This is why I’m organizing with Student Researchers United.” – Lennart Langouche

“I am a Graduate Student Researcher in Computer Science working on Natural Language Processing and more broadly Machine Learning. I strongly support forming a union, as it will give us the power to negotiate more just terms of work, and lift up the members of our community who face discrimination and structural barriers to success under the current system.” – Nikita Srivatsan

“I am a Graduate Student Researcher studying entanglement in the department of physics at UCSD. I support forming a Student Researcher union so that we can negotiate a fair contract that provides us the materials we need to do the work that drives academia, and protects us in cases of harassment and discrimination.” – Ahmed Akhtar

“I’m a Graduate Student Researcher studying quantitative biology at UCSD.  Forming a union will allow us to bargain for protections against harassment and discrimination, as well as better support so that all graduate student researchers can thrive here and better do the work that makes this university run.  This will promote a more equitable and inclusive scientific enterprise, which is something we very much need.” – Beverly Naigles

“I am a Graduate Student Researcher studying high energy physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Forming a union and negotiating legally-binding protections from harassment and discrimination is the only way to keep everyone in my community feeling safe and productive.” – Robert Lee

“I am a Graduate Student Researcher in the Biological Sciences Department studying neurobiology. When I was applying to jobs between my undergraduate and graduate programs, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to stay in the US. Optional Practical Training extensions that UAW helped pass allowed me to stay and have an important career experience. That showed me the important role that unions of academic workers have in giving political voice to international and immigrant workers.” – Donghyung Lee

“I’m a Graduate Student Researcher in computer science.  Having a union for graduate student researchers will give us more of a voice with the university admin on issues that matter to us.” – Craig Disselkoen

“I am a Graduate Student Researcher studying neuroscience at UCSD. Forming a GSR union would allow us to negotiate collectively for necessary policy changes to the UC administration. We shouldn’t have to ask for protections from harassment, discrimination, and for a more inclusive environment; it should be a guarantee.” – Chiaki Santiago

“I’m a Graduate Student Researcher working in Computer Science. Through collectively bargaining as researchers, we can broaden our research community to people from more diverse backgrounds, as well as making our conditions more desirable for everyone, and ultimately create a much stronger institution.” – Alex Sanchez-Stern

“My name is Rhea-Comfort Addo and I am a graduate student researcher in Biological Sciences at UCSD, studying heart development. I support union contracts because they provide empowerment for all student workers, but especially the most vulnerable student workers. Union representation is an avenue for building a more equitable and inclusive training experience for our student trainee community. Community is important, and unions help support our community.” – Rhea-Comfort Addo

“I’m a 4th year engineering PhD and I research acoustofluidic devices—liquid manipulation via sound. Overwhelmingly, people in academia struggle with personal wellbeing and on top of that there are crises in equity, publication, reproducibility, and the cost of education. A critical step in fixing these foundational issues is to fix power and incentive imbalances by granting power to those who do a large proportion of the work, Student Researchers.” – William Connacher

“I’m a Graduate Student Researcher (GSR) in Linguistics working on formal language theoretic models of phonology. The baseline pay for GSRs in my department is at Step 5, and only students working on computational projects are eligible for Step 7 GSR positions. This amounts to a 13% increase in pay over the baseline rate, and contributes to the undervaluation of theoretical and descriptive language work in Linguistics. All of our research is valuable, so I support forming a student researchers union because it will empower student researchers to negotiate fair pay for all.” – Anna Mai

“I’m a PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering, working across disciplines in audio signal processing for acoustics and healthcare. Whenever I’m a TA, the Union has my back and helps protect my rights as an employee. But when I’m a GSR, I don’t have anyone advocating for me in the same way. This needs to change; we need to organize.” – Louis Pisha

“I am a Graduate Student Researcher in Computer Science Studying Machine Learning and Privacy. Having a union contract with just cause protections will provide Student Researchers greater security.” – Mary Anne Smart

“A strong union will protect me so I can do the work that I love. As workers together we have the power to change society for the better.” – Cassandra Henderson