UM President Calls Police to Detain Striking Graduate Workers, Docks Their April Pay, and Dines Out

For immediate release

News from Graduate Employees Organization 3550 

April 20, 2023

UM President Calls Police to Detain Striking Graduate Workers, Docks Their April Pay, and Dines Out

Today (4/20/23), after the University of Michigan announced plans to withhold pay from the April paychecks of striking Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs), University President Santa Ono sent campus police to shove graduate workers who were picketing in front of his SUV. One graduate worker was violently shoved onto the ground. Two graduate workers were detained and released after striking workers and bystanders surrounded police and demanded the picketers’ release. 

Earlier in the evening, President Ono went to dinner at a restaurant in Downtown Ann Arbor. Several graduate workers, hearing news of the President’s excursion and hoping to have a conversation with him, met outside of the restaurant to hold a picket. When three workers entered the restaurant to speak with Ono directly, his bodyguard slammed the door to the private dining room in their faces. 

When President Ono left the restaurant, picketing graduate workers met him outside the entrance. Instead of talking about graduate workers’ working conditions, President Ono hid in his car and attempted to drive away. Graduate workers stepped in front of the vehicle with hands held up, and his driver accelerated, pushing the graduate workers into an intersection.

As graduate workers chanted “What do we want? Our paychecks now!”, University of Michigan campus police—blocks away from campus itself—arrived at the scene. Instead of de-escalating the situation, one police officer shoved a graduate worker to the ground and detained them. Another officer detained a different graduate worker, while picketers repeatedly chanted “Let them go.” Several bystanders joined the chanting while police were handcuffing both graduate workers. One bystander shouted that graduate workers have a right to protest, and another bystander shouted that the campus police should return to campus. After several minutes of chants, police released both graduate workers.

“The administration would rather take us to court and detain us than address the urgent cost-of-living crisis that graduate workers face at the University of Michigan,” said Kathleen Brown, a graduate worker who was detained by University campus police.

“This is what we’ve been saying all along,” said Dr. Alejo Stark, also a graduate worker at the University of Michigan. “The University prioritizes spending over $32 million on policing alone, not to mention administrators’ bonuses, instead of paying graduate workers a living wage and paying their fair share to fund an unarmed, non-police emergency response program. Coincidentally, $32 million is also what it would cost the University to pay graduate workers a living wage.”

“This incident illustrates the role that campus cops play in protecting the powerful and the wealthy, not the workers,” Dr. Stark added.

The University of Michigan’s Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO), which represents over 2,300 graduate workers, is on its 23rd day of strike to demand a living wage and a fair contract with guarantees for community health and safety, including investment in an unarmed, non-police crisis response.