On Day 14, Hundreds Rally For Fasters

After two weeks putting nothing more than water into their stomachs, three of the original eight graduate teachers still fasting to press Yale to negotiate with their union mustered the energy to ask their employer: How much longer?

They asked how much longer Yale will make them wait before university officials will recognize their newly elected union, UNITE HERE Local 33, and begin negotiations on health care, gender equality, and racial diversity. The union, which represents graduate student teachers at six out of 50-odd academic departments at the university, is seeking a first contract. It has accused Yale officials of using stalling tactics to give President Donald Trump time to make new anti-union appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. Yale has said that it is waiting on the board to rule on its appeal of a decision to allow just some graduate student teachers to vote in a recent unionizing election.

Three of the original eight fasters remain on a water-only diet; five other Local 33 activists have taken the place of five other original fasters, who swapped out on medical advice.

On Tuesday, the three remaining original fasters were pushed in wheelchairs onto the green of the Cross Campus for a rally to mark the protest’s second week. They sat with former fasters and their surrogates, and the likes of U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Mayor Toni Harp, and Board of Alders President and Local 35 Chief Steward Tyisha Walker to press their case against the university. Some 200 supporters, who created a human clock, joined them, urging Yale officials to speed up time, and stop the fast by getting to the negotiating table.

Lukas Moe, a graduate student teacher in the English department, talked to the crowd about mental health care — or the lack of adequate care for graduate students. He’s watched friends become depressed, hospitalized, expelled from Yale and then deported without ever receiving the mental health care needed.

“We’ve been demanding real mental health care because it takes months to get an appointment here at Yale,” he said. ​“You only get a few months of care then they drop you. You have to wait a year [for more care] and then you have to start over at the back of the line. Everyone deserves access to the care they need to be healthy.

“Together we can name the problem for what it is,” Moe said. ​“It’s not a problem with us, but a problem with Yale. How much longer will Yale make us wait three months for an appointment? How much longer do we have to wait for real coverage? How much longer do we have to wait for our union, for the power and the voice we deserve? How much longer does Yale want me to fast? Because I will go on as long as I can and I know that others stand ready to take my place. Fourteen days is nothing next to three months, or next to 12 sessions. How much longer?”

Moe said he was feeling exhausted, but hopeful that the graduate student teachers will prevail and the show of support from not only different parts of the Yale community, including from faculty members means a lot. The graduate students got a boost from Jennifer Klein, a Yale history professor, who wrote this opinion about the fast for The New York Times. (Another professor, Amy Hungerford, wrote this countervailing opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

“It means a lot to us as the people who work with them every day,” Moe said of the faculty support the fasters have received. ​“We teach with them and do research with them. For them to say, ​‘You guys are the future of the academy and we support you makes all the difference in the world and I think Yale takes it very seriously that we are a united front with the faculty.”

But the fasters don’t want a united front with faculty members who sexually harass female graduate students or marginalize them in the classroom, said Emily Sessions, an original faster who teaches in the history of art department, said. She chastised the administration for its inaction in fostering gender equality in the classroom or dealing with the results of its own 2015 survey that reported that reported that nearly 54 percent of women had experienced sexual harassment.

“I do not think you will find a woman in the graduate school who has not had a whole series of experiences of everyday sexism,” she said. ​“I’m talking about men interrupting, and classes where only men speak. I’m talking about men being praised for rephrasing women’s ideas. And about male scholars being called brilliant while women are hard working.

“It’s been this way for years and nothing changes,” she added. ​“Fourteen days is nothing next to 54 percent. How much longer?”

Local 33 Chair and Wooster Square Alder Aaron Greenberg stopped fasting at the 13 and a half-day mark after losing between 15 and 20 pounds, but he was there Tuesday to support his fellow graduate student teachers. He was visibly thin, but in high spirits, marching from Cross Campus and taking several laps around Beinecke Plaza Tuesday.

“I was able to participate as long as I could and I am humbled by colleagues who continue and the colleagues who step in at a moment’s notice so that the fast can continue,” he said. ​“It meant a lot to me to know one of my colleagues from my department took my place. It was a very powerful experience. Very hard on the body. Very hard psychologically, but it meant so much and was so sustaining to have the support of our colleagues and our friends and family, elected officials, clergy and faculty and everybody who came to visit us at 33 Wall St.,” the ​“bowshed” temporary structure Local 33 has erected on Beinecke Plaza in defiance of the university.

The new graduate student fasters to be subbed in include Alyssa Battistoni of the political science department, Sarah Arveson of the people of geology and geophysics department, Alex Kolokotronis of the political science department, Chris McGowan of the English department, and Jeremie Koenig of computer science department.

Local 33 has taken some criticism for subbing out fasters when it is deemed medically unsafe for someone to continue to keep the fast going. Greenberg said it’s not a hunger strike. President Peter Salovey — who said Yale has a right to press its argument against the unionizing ​“Micro-election” decision at the NLRB — in a community-wide email message called on the activists to cease their protest, arguing that it’s better to conduct a debate through proper channels rather than have one side threaten self-harm.

“No one is threatening their health long term,” he said. ​“No one is threatening injury or death. This is an action that comes at a significant personal sacrifice. I’ve lost in the last 14 days around 15 to 20 pounds. I know many of my colleagues faced similar things. I faced low blood sugar and low blood pressure. It’s tiring on your body. Make no mistake about it is a very difficult sacrifice and it is made even more powerful not just because a few people are doing it on their own until they die, but because many people in our community who want to participate and take part continue to do it and do it safely.”

Charles Decker, an original faster who is still going, echoed that sentiment, saying that the idea isn’t to make Yale ​“race to the death,” but to emphasize the support of the community of graduate students. As one of only 32 black men out of 2,890 students in Yale’s graduate school of arts & sciences, Decker said, he has championed the cause of racial equity and wants to see the university lead on that issue. He said he believes when he has spoken up about the lack of racial equity, the university has attempted to make him invisible. He said fasting makes the problem of race equity on campus visible. He said he doesn’t know if the things that the graduate student teachers have identified as what they want to negotiate with Yale could have attracted the attention without the fast.

“It is such a powerful moment when someone else from the graduate school comes in and takes the place of that person [who couldn’t continue on],” he said. ​“It shows our strength and our resilience in a powerful way that I don’t know how we could replicate.”

Yale argues that it already provides generous terms for graduate students, who study tuition free and receive annual stipends of $30,000 a year or more along with health insurance. 

Another View

Earlier Tuesday, the outgoing chair of Yale’s Graduate Student Assembly, which represents student teachers in all university departments, offered an opposing view during an appearance on WNHH radio’s ​“Dateline New Haven.”

The chair, Nicholas Vincent, a seventh-year biology PhD student who studies how ribosomes are made, said he respects the fasters’ dedication to their cause. But he argued that graduate student teachers and researchers are ​“apprentices,” not traditional ​“workers,” and that unionization threatens the relationship between faculty ​“mentors” and the students. He argued that the Graduate Student Assembly can more effectively advocate for members’ needs than a union can.

“Yes, we are doing work. Yes, we are teachers. We are also being trained to be scholars in our field,” Vincent said. ​“We are trainees” who wouldn’t yet be able to obtain permanent employment.

The GSA voted 45 – 10 (with two abstentions) this past September to stay neutral overall on the question of whether graduate student teachers should unionize. However the GSA voted 37 – 26 against being represented by UNITE HERE Local 33, and 44 – 17 with two abstentions) against the ​“micro-bargaining unit” strategy that led to the recent elections. Vincent noted that only 228 of Yale’s 2,600 Ph.D students got to vote in the elections; he agreed with Yale President Peter Salovey that all graduate students should be considered a single bargaining unit, as they are at Harvard and Columbia. Local 33 argues that different deaprtments have different enough concerns to require separate bargaining units.

In the WNHH interview, Vincent disagreed with the decision of Yale College Republicans to show their opposition to the Local 33 fasters by holding a barbecue steps away from the encampment to tempt them with the smell of cooked meat. He said more civil ​“conversation” should take place on campus about the graduate student teacher controversy. Asked if President Salovey should visit the encampment and chat with student protesters instead of primarily communicating by email, Vincent said ​“it would definitely be a change in how” discussion is taking place on campus right now.

Click on the above audio file to listen to the full interview with Nicholas Vincent on WNHH radio’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program. UNITE HERE, which has called for Yale to engage in more open dialogue, declined an invitation to participate in the program.

Paul Bass contributed to this article.