for a better biosciences
demand demanding demands
In 2022, I organized a student letter within my biosciences PhD program. Together, we demanded a raise, fee remission, and improved DEI resources. The letter writing process took several weeks of meeting up at the Library Bar, divvying up sections, collaborating together on what we wanted to see our program become. We voted on language and how and when the letter would be distributed among our program. We were a group of a dozen or so graduate students, together, examining what conditions lay before us and what a new future could contain.
A majority of my program’s graduate students signed the letter. I am incredibly proud of the petition; it is very well written. We won the highest raises our graduate program has seen in over 20 years, better reporting structures, international student fee relief, and a democratic DEI committee. But we never received an official response, just the rollout of policies after the letter claimed by those who said no to them before.
But labor organizing is a power struggle. In our case, we were expressing a unified voice and vision that we did not have before. Program administration, University administration called us entitled, were offended we used the word “demand.” Threats were made – if we kept demanding money, they would replace us with research techs. PIs would stop taking on students from our program. Our reputations would be forever tainted.
My mother, an accomplished academic, read over our letter. “Be careful with the word demand. Have your professors ever demanded anything of you?”
When other biosciences programs followed suit and wrote their own letters, they said “request” or “ask,” receiving praise from their program directors for avoiding that word.
More than asking for money, more than asking for policy change or more work, it was the word ‘demand’ which caused the most backlash. “Demand” was the scapegoat, the reason we could be denied most all what we asked for, including a formal acknowledgement of our email; “demand” was the reason we could be dismissed, rudely.
“I am still very offended by someone demanding something of me,” my now-program director tweeted, days after accusing graduate students of “living wage rants” and “being petulant.” “I would never disrespect a student or colleague or anyone I want to influence.”
To demand means you are in a position of power, as the union, self-empowered, it is understanding what we have now is not enough, that it doesn’t need to be this way.
To demand is to understand the reality of our position, that without us science would not exist. Without us, it will all stop.
To fix the broken system, the sinking ship, or whatever phrase we use to describe the place we are now, we must look to each other. The power to change our conditions - the overwhelming odds of mental health issues in grad school, the sub-living wage, the bullying and harassment for which we have no recourse, that one can seemingly be dismissed without cause - does not come from our PI, our Chancellor, our administration, but from ourselves.
I’ve never listened when anyone has told me an improvement in the working conditions of graduate workers is not possible. I have been told we can not make more money, that we can not afford paid parental leave, that the Chancellor will not meet with us.
Under my leadership, our union has won raises, segregated fee relief, paid parental leave, and, as of this week, the Governor’s endorsement.
We just launched another biology letter. This time, several biosciences programs are collaborating. But the group of letter writers now meet at Steenbock’s, and we do not use the word “demand.” We are afraid, and it’s a shame. I am heartbroken, that my friends and I must strategize around six letter words. We worry nobody will support us if we demand. Worse, we worry it will provoke further retaliation, harming our goals.
Retaliation does double damage in my program, it hurts the victims, and it hurts the union organizers, who are seen as provoking the retaliation. Of course, that is the point. “All was fine for me until you got here.”
I am regretful of our concession, to avoid the word ‘demand,’ though small.
“Power,” Frederick Douglass said, of course, “concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Soon I will have a PhD in Microbiology, but I already have one in standing. Standing through challenges, fear, intimidation, the sorts of things said never to your face, though you hear them anyway, the suite of tactics used upon every worker in the world. If we must work, we must understand all that we do and the contributions we make. Without us, it will all stop, and that is why we demand.