So this is what an abusive relationship feels like.

2020-02-14

Let's be clear on what Kletzer is threatening: expulsion, for anyone too poor or too unAmerican to matter.

Did you know international students aren't allowed to work for any employer but the university, for nine months of every year? Did you know we're limited to maximum 50% time, even then? Did you know our tuition amounts to $36,000 dollars per year, which is of course only remitted if we "decide" to work for the university?

Did you know that even under the critique of labour structures that gives us the phrase "wage slavery", it is still assumed, at least in theory, that the worker can change jobs?

I was a child, in 2001. In the West Indies, American news was pretty much all we got. And what I learnt of this country, these grand United States of America, back then, was that it was a bulldog, foaming at the mouth, on a leash. You knew the leash would never actually hold if the bulldog decided to bite. All you could do was hope that when it lashed out, it didn't find it profitable to bite you.

I was a teen in 2008, still young and impressionable. And I learnt that... it was possible to be wrong. Perhaps I'd been hasty, or dumb, in making an assessment of an entire country that quickly. Perhaps I would find myself open to an opportunity to live and work honestly in those States, if it arose. Perhaps I could let it charm me.

I was no longer a teen in 2016, but I had already signed my acceptance of an offer from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

I was suckered, of course.

My offer letter had presented my tuition remission as part of my funding package, in one big happy number that was thus north of $50 grand a year. I'd bought into the marketing, wherein the University cared about its diversity and its students. But ultimately, I'd bought into the marketing, that it was possible for a state like California, for a public institution like the University within, to resist the ever-present tendency to rip, to maul, to shred, that characterises the bulldog brain.

You can't fool someone unless they want to believe the lie, after all.

And in some ways, it's been totally worthwhile. I've deeply valued my time—upto my now fourth year living, and working, and researching, in Santa Cruz. I've valued the friendships, the connections, and the advising I've gotten, from my friends and my faculty.

But there's been a pall over it all, one I haven't wanted to acknowledge. A deeply, unequivocably, ridiculously destructive force at its core.

And it is now, finally, profitable for it to maul me.

In doing this, in having this response to graduate students fighting for a living wage, Kletzer and her faceless bosses at UCOP have shown the true colours of the University.

Don't let the diversity marketing fool you, I beg of you. If this kind of reactionary, Trumpian, anti-immigrant, exclusionary bullshit can fester in the heart of the state of California's public University, it is too deep-rooted a poison to even attempt to cure. Let it wither and die, my fellow unAmericans, let this so-called city on the hill rot, let them bleed themselves dry, frantically whispering to themselves that At Least They Made Money.

Fire me, Kletzer. Fire me, and tell the child I was twenty years ago that he was right. Fire me and tell me that the University is not worth the next two years of my life, much less the previous four. Fire us, and tell the world exactly what you stand for.

Fire me, Kletzer. Please.

Sohum Banerjea
Pronouns: he/him
Rent Burden: 48% (what’s this?)
University of California, Santa Cruz
PhD student in Computer Science

PS: Hey, at least now we have a good upper bound on how much a diversity quota is worth. I've always wondered!