UC Students Demand a Tuition Refund for Each Day Missed from UAW Strike

Mike Blake/Reuters(Editor’s Note: UC Students are circulating a Petition, demanding a tuition refund for each day missed due to the strike).

To the UC Board of Regents:

As a current undergraduate student in the University of California system, I am requesting a tuition refund for each day of the ongoing academic worker strikes in reparations for the disruption of my higher education due to UC’s Board of Regent’s refusal to meet and engage in good-faith negotiations with UAW bargaining team.

Over the last several weeks, the refusal on behalf of the Regents to negotiate with workers has negatively impacted my academics due to severely decreased access to university resources, classroom expertise, and more.

As a student, I am expected to get my work done in a timely manner. I, therefore, find it unacceptable that the UC Board of Regents had years to negotiate reasonable terms with all parties, yet failed to do so with any of them; further, I find it reprehensible that they missed each and every contractual deadline with the full knowledge and intent of gambling hundreds of thousands of academic futures against the economic wellbeing of the tens of thousands propping them up–resulting in the November 20, 2022 strike of four UAW locals ensuing in the practical collapse of academic programming spanning all 9 campuses across the broader University of California network.

Why is this important?

The purpose of a strike is to put pressure on the employer. However, as it stands, UC administrations have nothing to lose.

  • Students pay the same tuition regardless of how much time and learning we lose if a strike occurs
  • Administrators continue to earn their comfortable salaries even if classrooms are empty.
  • It’s a public system, therefore students can’t really “take their business elsewhere.” The colleges, therefore, have a monopoly.

Students suffer the most, yet we are not part of the conversation. We lose learning. We lose time. We demand a refund.

We, the students*, want to be in school and we want to learn. We are paying for it. If the Board of Regents does not consider our educational and employment prospects as motive enough to reach an agreement, then perhaps a justifiable hit to the UC bottom line will. #wepaytolearn #fairucnow

About The Author

Disclaimer: the views expressed by guest writers are strictly those of the author and may not reflect the views of the Vanguard, its editor, or its editorial board.

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