Dear Provost Shrivastav and President Whitten,

As a world-class research and teaching institution, Indiana University Bloomington relies on the work of graduate students as the life-blood for research development and academic formation. IUB has entered its third century of scholarly excellence, and its graduate students play a larger role than ever in achieving the Campus’s mission to create, disseminate, preserve, and apply knowledge. If the University is truly committed to meeting the changing educational and research needs of the state, the nation, and the world, it must first commit to creating an environment where graduate students can thrive.

Pursuing an advanced degree is a difficult endeavor. While academic scholarship is challenging on its own, it often takes a backseat to the accompanying financial hardships that post-graduate education incurs. These hardships faced by the graduate student workers at IU Bloomington have long gone unaddressed. The truth is this: graduate work is work. Graduate student workers are workers, and as such they deserve to have a seat at the table to negotiate their working conditions.

We fully support the efforts of IUB graduate student workers to seek unionization and their recent decision to strike. We applaud the faculty who have signed pledges of neutrality.

The Administration’s refusal to meet with organizers and recognize a union vote is disappointing, but what’s more troubling is their use of union-busting tactics that are designed to disparage, discourage, and derail the efforts by IUB graduate student workers to self-organize. In a recent letter to members of the University Faculty Council, IU Provost Shrivastav threatened student academic appointees (SAAs) who participate in a strike with suspension, termination, or non-reappointment. This type of retaliation is appalling and has no place in our IU community.

We, the undersigned IUB alumni, in concern over these developments, call upon the IUB Administration to

• recognize the union vote by the Indiana Coalition of Indiana Grad Workers,
• cease all tactics meant to intimidate graduate student workers and delegitimize their unionization efforts, and
• refrain from retaliating against graduate student workers who choose to strike by terminating or declining to renew their contracts, or by any other means.

Until the IUB Administration fulfills these requests, some of the undersigned have committed to withholding donations to Indiana University.

The graduate student workers of Indiana University Bloomington deserve to have a say in their working conditions. We hope that the Administration will acknowledge this and negotiate in good faith to ensure that our Campus remains a beacon of academic excellence into its next century.