The Graduate Employee Organization UAW 1596, the labor union that represents teaching assistants and research assistants at UMass Lowell, demands anti-sexual harassment protections and disability accommodations for graduate workers be included in its Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).

Graduate Workers Demand Anti-Sexual Harassment Protections

Sexual harassment is a major concern among graduate workers. According to a nationwide survey by the Association of American Universities (2016), around 44% of female graduate students experience sexual harassment on-campus. Women, students of color, international students, and LGBTQ+ students are especially vulnerable among graduate students. When graduate students experience sexual misconduct from advisors or other faculty, they risk facing retaliation if they report it to the university because they rely on advisors and others for the progression of their careers.

Survivors of sexual harassment at universities have not received just outcomes from their universities’ sexual misconduct proceedings (such as Title IX investigations) and have faced institutional bias, re-traumatization, and offensive behavior from these offices. Moreover, students and scholars have voiced concerns that no investigation carried out by employees hired by the university is truly neutral when complaints are filed against university employees.

UMass Lowell is not exempt from these systemic problems. For instance, according to a May 2019 article from The UMass Lowell Connector, one undergraduate student who was sexually assaulted reported her assault to the university. The student conduct office investigated, made procedural errors (such as leaving out parts of her testimony), and incorrectly concluded that she consented, which resulted in her assailant moving back into her residence hall.

Additionally, even when an investigation concludes that sexual misconduct occurred, this does not guarantee that the perpetrators are held accountable. For example, although the former Associate Dean Oliver Ibe was found by UML Office of Equal Opportunity and Outreach (EOO) to have engaged in sexual harassment and had multiple complaints made against him, the university’s response was to demote him and decrease his salary. Ibe only resigned from the university in 2019 after campus protests and community pressure (The UMass Lowell Connector, April 2019).

During a listening session with the UML Task Force on Sexual Harassment (which was created after students, faculty, and staff protested UML’s mishandling of sexual harassment cases), many students have voiced their frustration over how their cases were handled by the university grievance procedures. They said the university did not follow grievance procedures properly, which makes them less likely to go forward with reporting claims. This frustration comes from the consistent lack of just outcomes from the university grievance procedures (The UMass Lowell Connector, November 2019).

Therefore, we demand graduate workers’ right to file sexual harassment grievances through the union’s grievance and third-party arbitration procedure (which is called Real Recourse) as an additional resource for survivors of sexual harassment.

Through this procedure, graduate workers could have the right to take sexual harassment grievances to a neutral arbitrator independent from the university. Real Recourse frees graduate workers from having to fight for just outcomes amid institutional bias and bear the financial burden of hiring a lawyer. Real Recourse supports graduate workers with union representation and protection, impartial arbitration procedures, and legal support.

Graduate Workers Demand Disability Accommodations

Employees at UML experience harassment and discrimination based on disability. According to the Building a Better UMass Lowell campus unions survey (2022), “lower-paid, BIPOC, and disabled employees are more likely to report discrimination in the workplace at UML. Survey respondents across bargaining units reported harassment based on gender and gender identity, sexual orientation, job classification and disability.”

The current CBA between GEO and UML does not include necessary workplace accommodations for graduate workers with disabilities. Disabled graduate workers have had difficulty securing accommodations from the university, and the university has weaponized the language of CBA to deny reasonable accommodations. For example, one graduate student sought a reduced course load for their disability. University officials used the CBA’s requirement that graduate workers be enrolled full-time as a reason to deny this student their accommodation.

We demand the inclusion of disability accommodations (e.g. reduced course load) in GEO’s CBA, which will provide graduate workers with support, protection, and representation from GEO if disability accommodations are denied by the university.

In conclusion, the university has continued to deny GEO’s demands for enhanced anti-sexual harassment protections and disability accommodations since June 2023 choosing to ignore the evidence GEO presented in both student and expert testimony, academic literature, and case studies.

The university’s response is that EOO is the appropriate avenue for this and the bargaining table is not, even though graduate workers continue to bring up concerns over the university’s procedure. The university offers “solutions'', such as “a forum with EOO”, that fail to address the institutional problems at play. Furthermore, at the bargaining table, the university has shown no interest in upholding its commitment to social justice and systemic change beyond the surface level. Members of the University’s bargaining team claimed that they are frustrated by the implications that they do not care about diversity and equity and one of them stormed out of GEO’s presentation on these nondiscrimination proposals.

By failing to take steps to empower marginalized graduate workers at the bargaining table, the university is marginalizing them more and not upholding its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. GEO’s demands enable historically marginalized graduate workers to create avenues for social justice and equity with the support of union protection, representation, and resources.

We demand that UMass Lowell meet GEO’s demands for anti-sexual harassment protections and disability accommodations for graduate workers.