The Union Is Back From The Grave

When the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences instituted the controversial Kraus plan for financial aid, administrators announced apologetically to students that there was no alternative--time and money were too limited.

When about 200 graduate students voted unanimously Wednesday night to resurrect the Graduate Student Teaching Fellow Union and organize a strike around seven demands for a revised plan, the rationale was strangely similar--"we have no choice," several spokesmen said at the meeting.

Several groups of students arrived at the open meeting ready to set the Union machinery in motion. One group presented a set of seven demands for revisions in the plan. The demands passed unanimously.

They call for a revised plan which:

* requires no parental or spouse contribution;

* guarantees financial aid equal to the student's full need;

* allows each student $5000 of protected assets, and;

* does not reduce the size of Harvard's teaching staff or increase the teaching load of the current staff.

The demands also call for general policy changes:

* The formation of Educational councils--consisting of at least 50 per cent elected undergraduate and graduate students--in each department with responsibility for final decisions about departmental educational policy.

* No increase in available funds for undergraduates and non-professional employees.

* Recognition of the Union as the sole bargaining agent for graduate students.

Another group of students outlined procedures for reorganizing the Union around the seven demands and striking if necessary. These, too, were endorsed unanimously. The procedures call for a work-stoppage and class boycott on March 12, providing that at least 500 students have signed the Union pledge by that date and voted to strike.

The 200 graduate students, their spouses and several babies proceeded through the meeting's agenda fairly methodically, with only occasional ovations and muffled outbursts. Even Edward T. Wilcox, dean of the GSAS who spoke early in the meeting, received an honest hearing. Wilcox told the students that he lacks power to change the plan because of budgetary limits, and then left the meeting. He said afterwards that he had prepared no countertactics in the event of a strike.

An hour later, the strike vote passed unanimously--Wilcox's sympathy and apology notwithstanding. The vote came after several spokesmen had argued that graduate students lack the time, money and bargaining power to change the plan without a strike.