In the past few months, USC has followed up their violent repression of student speech on campus by pursuing criminal and disciplinary charges against student protestors, militarizing our campus, and failing to engage in good faith with our union. In response, we organized: filing an Unfair Labor Practice charge, organizing rallies, and expanding our efforts to pressure our elected leaders while simultaneously pursuing grievances against USC for retaliating against our members.
Now, we have some good news: the City Attorney has declined to file criminal charges against members of our union at this time. We learned this news after our union’s Drop The Charges rally held at Los Angeles City Hall on June 14th, where City Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martinez and members from several labor unions across LA spoke in support of the fact that the university and city must not persecute people for their protected right to free speech. This is a critical step in showing USC that the disciplinary charges against students are unfair and unacceptable.
Additionally, on the day of the rally, USC dropped the bag check requirement when entering campus and opened up an additional access point.
This fight is not over, as many students are still facing difficult disciplinary proceedings that jeopardize their employment, their research, and their academic careers — those who have already been punished are essentially being treated as guilty until proven innocent. Additionally, USC is still moving forward with illogical and inconsistent policies on how we, as graduate student workers, access our campus.
It’s the dedicated work we have done together that has moved USC and the city attorney, and we will continue to fight until USC drops all academic disciplinary proceedings and restores campus access. Sign up here if you want to continue coming together for our fellow coworkers and pressure USC to drop all disciplinary measures and lift all restrictions to accessing campus.