Walking across campus, it is tough to miss the shouts from distant gatherings. Marching in a circle, drawing honks from cars, and waving signs in the air. Indiana University’s graduate workers are on strike. They want a union.
But, as is common with most strikes, it is often more than just the two dueling sides that are impacted. What has happened to the students in the graduate workers’ clases while they are out striking?
Undergraduate students have been caught in the crossfire. While the graduate strike continues on, another major milestone in the academic calendar rolls closer and closer: finals. At a point in the semester when undergraduate students need the most support, their associate instructors are not in the classroom, and they have noticed.
IU Freshman Natalia Morzhova details how the strike altered her classroom studies.
“It’s definitely been more difficult,” IU Freshman Natalia Morzhova said. “There’s a lot of assignments right now that I would love to get support and help on from graduate students. But, they are not there.”
Professors are now forced to pick up the extra work left behind, and in some cases, it is simply too much of a load to complete on time.
“All of the grading has been delayed by the strike,” IU Professor Gabriele Guidi said. “I am not against the strike, it is just to say it is a natural consequence on the undergrads.”
Not only do professors need to navigate how to make up for the extra work, but they also have to navigate through what has become a tense relationship between graduate workers and the IU administration. Do they voice their support and risk their job security in certain situations? Do they sit quiet and support the University?
IU Professor Gabriele Guidi describes the impact of the graduate worker strike on the class schedule and workload.
Graduate work coordinators are dealing with a similar issue themselves. They need to decide how to best assist undergraduate students while also not interfering with their employees’ strike.
In one email to graduate workers, an anonymous work coordinator discussed the predicament.
“I will not ask if you are striking,” the coordinator said. “All of you were hired because you care about student success.”
The coordinator then proposed options to still assist students while also striking. Those options included asynchronous learning, in which graduate workers would not have “class during class time, but still [post] material that the students work through and submit.”
Another option was a partial strike which entails canceling some, but not all, classes.
Regardless of which path striking graduate workers decide to take, undergraduate students are left to deal with a class and finals schedule that remains in flux.
“I am not currently sure what’s going to happen with finals in those classes,” IU Sophomore Hadassah Devault said. “But, the graduate workers and my professors have been very supportive and they’ve tried to help us in any way that they can without compromising the strike.”
