JUNE 5, 2019 TENTH WEEK VOL. 131, ISSUE 42
AMELIA FRANK
EDITOR’S NOTE This University can be atomizing. From the moment you step onto this campus for the first time, to long nights in Harper, to job fairs where you’re eyeing your classmates who are eyeing the recruiters, you can feel alone and disconnected. Success, too, can be isolating. We want to take this issue to reflect on the other moments—the ones of collaboration and solidarity that have defined our collective experience here. Our graduation issue this year is a little different. Flip
to the back cover and you’ll see that we’ve appended ongoing coverage of Graduate Students United’s strike. As white tents went up on the quad this week ahead of Alumni Weekend, many graduate students stopped their teaching and research and took to the quad in an attempt to gain the University’s recognition of the work they do as instructors, writing instructors, and researchers. Campus has looked different. Classrooms in many buildings have stood empty. The absence of graduate
students has been palpable. This week has shown that it’s impossible to disentangle the work of any one subset of the University—professors, lecturers, postdoctoral fellows, researchers, staff, graduate students, and even undergraduates—from the functioning of the University as a whole. Typically, our “Grad Issue” celebrates degrees awarded to students for their individual achievements. For this year’s issue, we want to celebrate collective achievements.