> While I am somewhat (and really, only somewhat) in support of the grad students lobbying for better benefits

Honestly, the rest of your comment bears no weight if this is your position, but I'll go through it anyway.

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Grad students are exploited everywhere. They're underpaid while expected to do the brunt of the work that actually makes the money for faculty salaries (through grants, etc.). Saying you don't support grad students lobbying for better benefits tells me that you believe this exploitation is justified. Why is that? Why should the students not be fairly compensated for their work — the work that lets the school run?

UCSC is especially problematic, too. Some 11% of grad students are considered homeless, which is more twice the number at the next UC school at around 4% (and, honestly, anything above 0% should be considered unacceptable).

Claiming the school is in the right here based on a contractual technicality is absurd. Grad students at UCSC are not paid a living wage. Santa Cruz is disproportionately expensive compared to the cities surrounding the other UC schools; it makes no sense that UCSC can pay as little as they do.

> They agreed to terms, and actively chose to violate them.

Yes, the grad student union of the UC system had worked out new salaries a couple years ago — but they overwhelmingly ignored the outcries from the Santa Cruz population, which is what led to the current situation. Students at other UC schools are better compensated relative to their local cost of living, unlike the Santa Cruz students. (Note that the students at other schools are still horrifically underpaid, in my eyes, but that's a different matter.)

Things simply got too bad for the UCSC grad students. So, what, they should just wait until the next negotiation, patiently sleeping in cars and at friends' houses as they struggle to afford food and other basic amenities?

> All this does is incentivize other similar groups to do the same, and learn that the longer and harder you go, the more likely you are to get what you want. And that public institutions can be held hostage.

I mean, really. This is an awful position to hold so firmly. The logical conclusion of a consistent application of this line of thinking is that you also think the Supreme Court made the wrong ruling in Browder v. Gayle, when they decided that segregation was unconstitutional? After all, that only came about because a group of Black women chose to "actively violate" the laws that they believed to be unfair.

If that isn't the case (which I sincerely hope), then you make allowances that sometime exceptions to contract violation are reasonable. In which case, I would have to ask: what more should the students need to suffer through to justify striking as they did? At what point does it become "enough" for you? Or do you think contracts are the end-all, be-all of life?

> If students had been violating their contract for other kinds of less popular speech, I highly doubt they would be forgiven like this.

Why on earth would generalization be appropriate here? The students have specific demands, brought about by a specific combination of events. "If they had been fighting for other things the university might not have agreed" — what a terrible point in your argument. What are you even trying to say?

The point here is entirely around the cost of living in Santa Cruz versus the students' ability to actually afford that cost. Nothing else is on the table, so I don't know why you bother bringing it up. It's a lazy argumentative tactic, I think. This is an exceptional circumstance. It was right to handle it in as an exception.

> I'm not glad to have public universities making those kinds of tacit judgement calls.

I'm honestly not sure I could roll my eyes any harder. I mean... who else would be making these calls? Why would they not be tacit? What does the universities being public have anything to do with this? Do you mean that it would be okay for a private university to capitulate to reasonable demands from its grad students, but not okay for a public university? Honestly, this line of yours reads as very condescending, but I genuinely don't know what you're trying to say other than "I don't like this because Reasons(™)."

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Look, the crux of it is that UCSC is taking advantage of its grad students. The students should have the right to fight to amend that, and we as onlookers should support their fight for just compensation. But, more crucially, the school should give in to the students' demands when those demands are found to be reasonable! This isn't "holding a public institution hostage" (what utter bullshit, frankly); it's "demanding a fair standard of living while the students do the majority of the work to make the university's name mean anything at all."