In response to a piece I wrote for the Daily on Dec. 4, "Time to take responsibility: graduate students need to unionize," which promoted the efforts of the Association of Student Employees at Tufts/United Auto Workers (ASET/UAW) to unionize, chemistry graduate student Jason Epstein wrote his own entitled "Graduate Student Unions - The voice of many, or the voice of a few?" published Dec. 6. He began by writing, "Listen . . . do you hear that? Neither did I. That silence is the sound of a union forming."

I don't know quite what this means. I assume that Epstein is suggesting that the unionization effort is nothing and therefore produces no sound, or maybe that the union has been acting covertly to garner support. Each is wrong. The union campaign is strong, backed by the involvement of graduate students from biology to art history to electrical engineering. And it has been vocal: We know what we're about and we're proud of it. Literature has been sent to all faculty and graduate students across the Medford campus, and open meetings have been held to discuss the issues.

We also have an informative website. The unionization effort began with dedicated and informed graduates going door to door, department to department, introducing themselves, asking their peers if they would support a union, and explaining what unionizing would mean.

The only silence that is offered is in the emptiness of Epstein's own response

to unionization: "I choose NOT [his emphasis] to have a union." The capitalized and italicized "NOT" says it all. He offers no solutions, skeptical that there indeed are any problems (something the administration understands all too well). Epstein asks what data exist to support the claim that there is a "need for X (X being increased

wages, health care, child care, dental coverage)."

Well, besides talking personally with graduate students for whom wages and insurance are important, I for one know I need dental insurance: keeping my teeth in good shape is both important and expensive. Moreover, I don't appreciate his representing such a need with the variable "X" - the sign of the unknown and foreign. The union supporters and I are talking about real needs in the real world. There's nothing hypothetical or mysterious about it.

Responding to such needs isn't unreasonable, either. Epstein asks if the union will "force the administration to give us things we may or may not deserve." Actually, a legally recognized union would be allowed to participate in collective bargaining with the administration in good faith. Not about "things," as Epstein states, but about specific work-related concerns, like receiving proper salaries to help us meet the high costs of living, and having a decent and affordable health insurance plan.

And, yes, we deserve these "things." All human beings, whether or not they're graduate students, are important enough to merit a decent salary for the important work they do and an insurance plan to help them stay healthy.

Apathy is easy; commitment is work. The graduate students involved with ASET/UAW are working for something better. Epstein offers no solutions and would even like to negate current efforts. His answer to ASET/UAW's efforts to improve the lives of individual students and hence strengthen the University is to remind us dismissively that we should be grateful for what we have, since, in his words, "Education is not a guaranteed right" (and once again the crucial "not" appears).

This is pretty irrelevant at an institution of higher learning whose emblem is "Pax et Lux." But whether or not education is a "right" (whatever this means), do any of us refuse to acknowledge the universality of "Peace and Light?" It's much too easy to say merely that things could be worse.

Carl Martin is pursuing a graduate degree in English.
Published in the Viewpoints section of the Tufts Daily on 01/22/02 and has been reproduced with permission.