My UCSC undergraduate daughter supports this post from her position on the picket lines.
3 to 2 is technically self-gratification.
Who/what/why is UCSC striking?
Grad students are striking for a COLA pay increase to account for the local cost of housing, which is genuinely strange in Santa Cruz. It's a small town on the beach, and it's surrounded by mountains and a state park in a way that makes it impossible for it to grow outward. And it's also beautiful and in commuting distance from Silicon Valley if you have one of those jobs that people have where you don't need to actually show up every day, so people bid housing way up. The university keeps on growing and dumping more undergraduates into the town as well.
Sally's living in a co-op off campus. Last fall she was appalled to be sitting in a house meeting with her housemates debating how much rent they were going to charge a fellow student for camping outdoors in the back yard and being allowed to come into the house to use the bathroom. (I think this ultimately did not happen, but it demonstrates what housing demand is like.)
I don't know what the outcome is likely to be, or what the university can reasonably do, but the problem is real.
Would it be cheaper if he just pissed in the yard and only came in to poop?
Adjusting for inflation, it looks like they get paid what I got paid when I was a graduate student. We had much cheaper housing, but had to live in Ohio.
But when I taught an independent section, I got more than the UCSC grad students. I guess as compensation for having to be polite to Ohioans.
Why are grad students paid in cola?
They aren't as important as prisoners, so they can't be paid in cigarettes.
Would it be cheaper if he just pissed in the yard and only came in to poop?
Is there any laurel?
Housing was pretty tight when I was a student in Santa Cruz back in the 1990's. I resolved that problem by being homeless, which is maybe not the best option for people
12: In Indiana ramen has has become the prison currency of choice. Don't know if that's just a Hoosier thing.
Santa Cruz is also especially beset by left-NIMBYs who obstruct more housing, including student housing.
Oh hey, I did fieldwork in Wilder Ranch above Santa Cruz for a while. Lots of people living in the park. Also some meth labs and pot grows, which complicate park management.
Heavy water constraints, too.
17 yeah i remember a real screw-you-i've-got-mine mentality when living nearby, and that was ages ago.