To the Editor:

I take exception to Matthew Schneider-Mayerson’s claim that “the University already lacks the support of — its graduate students” (“Strike time: here’s what you do,” 2/25). The majority of Yale’s graduate students have no major beef with the administration. We also have nothing against the hard-working members of locals 34 and 35, members whose raises have been held hostage for over a year by their leaders’ power-hungry insistence on annexation of the graduate students.

As a TA who is not a member of GESO, I resent that group’s request that I join their strike and cancel discussion sections. Only members of GESO were allowed to vote on this strike, so only they should feel any compulsion to abide by the result of that vote. Had all graduate students (roughly half of whom are not members of GESO) voted, the result would almost certainly have been against a strike.

I will cross picket lines proudly, and with a clear conscience.

Stacey Thompson GRD ’05

February 27, 2003