Over the past two years, the university has not budged in its refusal to recognize GESO, leaving the Graduate Student Assembly, which was created following the grade strike, as the only form of official representation. This September, graduate students voted to keep the GSA, long maligned by critics as an ineffective body, with 56 percent of voters supporting the assembly. In a marked display of apathy, only 15 percent of those eligible voted. One result of the debate has been a better understanding among some members of the public of the generous support, financial and otherwise, that institutions like Yale provide to their graduate students. Instead, Yale distinguishes between students who teach as part of their education and workers who have always had the right under law to organize.
Unions are for all workers, and it is symbolically important for the elite to agree with that.