Letters to the Editor: How UC has exploited the student academic workers on strike
If one of the most important goals of a free college is to make higher education more affordable for more and more students, then let us not deceive ourselves by insisting that the university, as an institution, does not create the problems or causes them. The university has been the one institution that has exploited the student labor movement more than any other institution.
First, the university is the one institution most beholden to the students. If a university student doesn’t attend, or fails a class, the student and the university are both in trouble. If the student is “lazy,” the university can’t collect any funds for his or her education.
Second, the university has exploited the student labor movement, to use the old (or rather new) economic term, as a mechanism for political manipulation. The students have been the primary beneficiaries of such exploitation. To give just some examples:
1. The university has used student “labor” and “opposition” as a political weapon against labor in every economic dispute in which the university has been involved. Whether it was in the economic strike where an academic worker walked out for two weeks, or in the “hot mic” scandal where a student, by the use of the university’s microphone, made the entire faculty at UC Davis look like a bunch of idiots, the university has used student “labor” as a political weapon in every instance.
2. The university has used student “labor” to prevent any meaningful discussion of wages/unemployment on campus and prevent any meaningful debate concerning the role of the university in controlling and disciplining its workers and students. The university has used student “labor” as a political weapon, not to improve wages and unemployment, but to create “student strikes,” “student opposition,” and “student boycotts.” As the student boycott of the University of Missouri
