An Alternative Fast

(Opinion) Just last month an Italian journalist — who was illegally detained — was released from a Turkish prison after a six-day hunger strike, nine nurses in the Mexican state of Chiapas — who were drawing attention to shortages of supplies and demanded the payment of wages and retirement payments — ended a 10-day hunger strike, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners declared an indefinite hunger strike in Israel, and eight Yale graduate students declared an indefinite fast.

The rationale behind the latter hunger strike does not compare by any standard to any hunger strike known to me, it is a distasteful show of self-righteousness masked as a selfless sacrifice of eight martyrs for the apparent greater good of graduate students in eight departments.

This alternative hunger strike might come across as comical at first, but it is not, it makes a mockery of a ​“path that many others have [traveled before],” to quote Aaron Greenberg.

It was Wednesday morning, I got myself some coffee when I suddenly found myself watching a video that I thought was a satirical clip. I was not; it was ​“The Fast against Slow” promotional video.

This hunger strike was obviously ridiculous, but was it? My experience at Yale has been nothing but positive. Of course there are issues that could and should be improved. But a hunger strike?

I started questioning myself whether I was that out of touch from the hardship that some of my peers have to endure during graduate school. Was I living in a bubble within a bubble?

A couple of conversations and hours later I was relieved, and I can say with certainty that I am not in a situation that warrants a hunger strike, nor is anyone that I know of in the graduate school.

The sense of urgency within Local 33 stems from the fear that under the new administration the National Labor Relations Board may be more likely to oppose graduate student unionization. However, it is a reality of the current system, that after employees agree to join a union, the process can be dragged out for months or years. Is this fair? Is this just? Arguably not, but not any injustice can be met with a hunger strike.

Members of Local 33 may point to the decades-long struggle for the right of graduate students at Yale to be recognized as employees, but it is a fact of graduate school that people either graduate or quit after less than one decade. There is no perpetuity to anyone’s state as a graduate student. One cannot reference long-lasting struggles such as the Civil Rights Movement as Local 33 has repeatedly done, without the implicit attempt of wanting to be equated to those. A short disclaimer acknowledging that it is not the Civil Rights Movement after referencing to it repeatedly serves no purpose whatsoever, but only leaves one wondering about the reason of such a comparison in the first place.

This is not a discussion whether graduate students should have the right to unionize; the National Labor Relations Board ruled in favor of graduate students and eight departments at Yale voted to unionize. This is not a discussion whether the current labor law is skewed against employees’ efforts to unionize. This is about eight individuals comparing themselves to the Civil Rights Movement and hunger strikers throughout history. This is about the self-importance of eight individuals whose action is disproportionate given the situation and to say the least, it is a disgrace.

Has the point of no return passed for the credibility of Local 33 as a whole, or did these eight individuals epically destroy the unionization efforts of eight departments?

The clock began ticking the moment the alternative fast was announced, and with every passing hour spent by these grandiose eight, courageously starving in a marvelous shed on Beinecke Plaza — adorned with twinkle lights, flowers, candles, couches and books donated by Yale faculty and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s office — the somber skies turn darker by the minute over the future of Local 33 or for that matter any future unionization effort by graduate students at Yale.

No, graduate students at Yale are not being illegally detained, are not owed millions, are not being held in dire conditions. Let’s not pretend that our lives can be compared to those in actual need, and for those graduate students that do, I sincerely hope you can eventually wake up from your alternative reality.

Thomas Hille is a Yale graduate student in math.