To the Editor:

As a member of Yale Law School’s Workers’ Rights Project, I was surprised to read about my supposed apathy regarding GESO’s strike last Wednesday (“Professional schools diverge on TA strike, 4/20). Although Ms. Courtney’s select interviewees grant the existence of a few isolated GESO supporters at the law school, support runs far wider than that, as a walk around the Law School would have indicated. “The Wall,” a part of the main hallway where students and professors can post information, posters, letters, and the like, displays human rights conventions, newspaper articles, and letters in support of GESO. The WRP held a teach-in about GESO before the strike began, and Law School clinics ranging from Community Lawyering to the Lowenstein Clinic on Human Rights have included work on labor issues. Perhaps most tellingly, Dean Harold Hongju Koh’s vision for the future of Yale Law School as an international center for human rights law implicitly supports GESO as the right to form a union remains at the heart of all major international human rights conventions.

For law students, the principle of representation is a simple one as lawyers are, ultimately, representatives. The right to a lawyer is the right to representation. At this time, GESO is asking nothing more than that the University recognize graduate student-employees’ right to representation, a right lawyers and law students, of all people, understand full well.

Judith Miller ’03 LAW ’07

April 24, 2005

To the Editor:

I am a supporter of the right of workers to unionize. However, I have had enough with GESO. Its tactics are ridiculous. From what I understand, unions protest outside of their workplaces. For GESO members, the workplace is HGS, LC, and WLH. Why, then, does GESO feel the need to set up camp at the corner of College and Wall streets, right outside my window? Furthermore, these TAs lead discussion sections that meet at 4:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Why, then, do they make noise at 9 a.m.? President Levin is nowhere near College and Wall streets and I am sure he is wide awake at 9 a.m. on Friday morning, while I certainly am not. Thus, what are they actually accomplishing besides annoying me and other Silliman students?

The amazing thing about GESO is how much noise they make with so few people. While I could clearly hear the megaphone, snare drum, and cow bell from my window, that was it. No inspired cheers, just a small group of strikers playing instruments. They just dispatch a few TAs, give them some noisemakers and tell them to be a nuisance. Not very impressive.

Bill Deitch ’07

April 22, 2005

To the Editor:

I am writing to clarify certain issues about Thursday’s protest by “a third group of undergraduates” at the GESO rally. (“Jesse Jackson rallies GESO,” 4/22).

Firstly, our Vietnam sign did not say “Get our troops out of Vietnam”, but “Troops out of Vietnam NOW!” This was deliberately chosen syntax, designed to convey our precise intentions. We made it clear that while we want troops out of Vietnam immediately, we are not necessarily demanding that GESO or Yale University be the ones to bring it about.

We would also like to make it clear that we were not, as you suggest, mocking the protest. At the standoff between GESO’s supporters and its opponents, we were the half-time entertainment. We neither supported nor opposed GESO’s aims, and we went to some trouble to ensure we remained neutral.

We believe that even during these times of trouble and tension, the affirmation that Harvard sucks and Princeton doesn’t matter can unite Yale University.

Rocky Kim ’08

April 22, 2005