It is now exactly one year ago that the campus was closed and students were told to pack their bags. Those who could returned home; those who couldn’t eked out an existence around campus. Overnight we converted to remote instruction. There was talk of the possibility of in-person teaching or hybrid teaching under specified conditions, but that was soon abandoned. Now, with vaccination accelerating, we hope to return to in-person teaching in the Fall–although we are growing accustomed to uncertainty.
Instructors have adapted to the transition diligently and conscientiously, and with little complaint. We have all dealt with varying degrees of difficulty, though it has been especially distressing for those with young families or looking after elderly parents. Perhaps, however, the greatest institutional burden has been carried, invisibly, by our Graduate Student Instructors. Caught between, on the one side, improvising professors struggling to master unfamiliar technologies, and, on the other, isolated and overwhelmed students, GSIs filled the breach. Many of them have sacrificed their own research in order to support our undergraduates, in some cases far in excess of their job description (organizing mutual aid, advocating for pass/fail options, etc.).
We now know, if we didn’t before, the importance of the material life of the university–co-presence on campus, and consequent access to campus resources, helps to equalize opportunity for students. COVID-19 not only makes inequalities transparent, they are magnified. GSIs have stepped up to meet the challenge, to fill the “care deficit” on their meagre salaries.
We have sometimes heard that these meagre salaries—that is, the exploitation of academic labor—are justified because graduate students are “apprentices,” learning the skills that will lead to tenure-track positions in the future. But the promise of future job security is fast disappearing as tenure-track positions evaporate, and as higher education becomes a subsidiary of the marketplace. We need a new vision of the public university if we are to remain true to our promise to our graduate students, but we also have to implement that vision. What better time to begin than now?
Michael Burawoy and Celeste Langan for the Board of the Berkeley Faculty Association.