RE: Journal editorial “Grad students are right, but their strategy is wrong”
Dear Editors,
Times are tough. I, a graduate student worker, designed and taught a 90-student lecture course this fall. The pay barely covered my tuition. When someone crossing the picket line mockingly said to me, “at least you have a job,” I was hurt. What good is a job if you can’t afford groceries or rent?
The Queen’s Journal editorial board recently argued “grad students are right, but their strategy is wrong.” The board wags its collective finger at us for chanting “shame” and blowing whistles. I believe they’ll reevaluate once they understand what’s at stake.
My employer is fighting to keep people poor. A friend and colleague calculated that, for their 200-hour contract, they worked over 300 hours. In my experience, unpaid labour is the norm, not the exception: Queen’s didn’t pay me a dime for several dozen hours of necessary preparatory work for my course. Meanwhile, our university refuses to divest millions of dollars from weapons manufacturers profiting from genocide. How can anyone be expected to accept the status quo?
Disruption, like withholding labour, pressures the employer to return to the bargaining table to negotiate a fair deal. An empty campus signals for TAs, TFs, and RAs. The opposite is true, too: every non-essential person in Stauffer Library, every scab labourer, and every instructor continuing on-campus classes weakens our position, potentially extending workers’—and undergraduates’—very real suffering.
Our picket line is loud and large, and I understand why some may feel intimidated. But looks can be deceiving. Come meet picketing workers and read our pamphlets. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
So, come say hi or grab a whistle and in—we have plenty! Help us in our fight against poverty wages so we can return to the classrooms we miss. We’re ready to give undergraduates a world-class education, but we shouldn’t have to do it on empty stomachs.
Solidarity forever!
Jesse Gauthier
Fifth-year PhD candidate in the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing
Queen’s financial mismanagement and treatment of TAs
Dear Editors, Principal Deane, Provost Evans, Board of Trustees, and Faculty of Relations,
I write to you angry. There should be no world where a critical part of the foundation of this school’s learning is continued to be viewed as a group that’s not deserving of this school’s respect. There has been a repeated pattern during my tenure at Queen’s of disrespect and ignorance towards those that make this school what it should be—great.
Yet, it seems time and time again that the people who hold power and who have the loudest voices, the ones who e-mail students about trying to resolve financial issues and navigating social injustices, continue to hold back this historically great and proud institution. At a University striving to teach a myriad of subjects, from the arts, to sciences, to commerce, to engineering, the only higher education you have imbued on the student body is the knowledge that you can run a university into the ground and continue to not only keep your job, but get paid for it, too.
From blaming government tuition freeze, to cutting vital courses and graduate programs that bring interest to Queen’s, and now bullying and refusing to cooperate with our TAs, it seems that at every step of the way, you hide under the facade of “saving money” and do the opposite.
I find it troubling to think of the future of Queen’s run under this istration. Who in the world would want to go to Queen’s with all of this awful press? How would THAT affect the budget? If your main concern is the budget, then your priorities are in the wrong place, AND it hasn’t been a job well done. If your priority lies in the students that make this University run, then fix the problem and stop running this two-faced game of caring about students and actively hurting them.
I could get into the numbers of Queen’s. The sheer millions going into just the utilities, or the fact that the University had the largest per cent change in salary paid in 2023 since 2008, and the largest average raise since 2018, also in 2023. Even including the total salary paid went up from 2022 to 2023 by 28 million dollars and the average salary increased by 8,000 dollars, the largest increases for both since the Ontario Sunshine List started tracking Queen’s in 1996.
Is this University interested in saving money to stay open, or saving money to line your pockets even further and increasing the wealth disparity that is already so prevalent? Are these problems really to blame on the government freezing tuition and on-campus workers asking for more money, or is it the mismanagement of the University’s funds, in part from a man who already nearly shut down a university in the UK, and tenured his wife at Queen’s as a condition to his hiring?
I hope this letter, and any other communications you get from students even angrier than I, change your stance, and you right the ship that you’ve steered off course.
Sincerely,
Eagan Tormey
Kin ’25
Workers human rights and solidarity on the PSAC 901 picket line
Dear Editors,
Solidarity on the picket line strengthens the movement; after all, workers’ rights are human rights.
As PSAC901 remains on strike, for the union on the picket line continues to grow. Campus and community groups are showing incredible displays of solidarity, and the picket line has become a site of learning, activism, and at times, protest. This salient display of the interconnectedness of labour rights and human rights has also garnered a lot of attention online, particularly from critics who argue that strike action should be isolated from other social causes.
However, we must recognize that the right to fair pay and to a workplace free from exploitation is itself inherently a human right. Strikes like the one happening on our campus aren’t just moments of labour unrest—they’re a collective demand for the recognition of these rights. When workers demand better conditions, they’re fighting for a campus—and world—where dignity and equity are upheld for all. To try and separate labour issues from social justice issues is to fundamentally ignore the reality that economic and social injustices are often two sides of the same coin.
The strength of strike action lies in its ability to foster collectivity. The solidarity displayed by groups such as Labour for Palestine Katorakwi, Anti-Colonial QT Collective, and Ontario Public Interest Research Group Kingston is not an indication that PSAC 901’s strike action is losing credibility, like has been suggested in the r/queensuniversity subreddit. Rather, that the injustices faced by graduate student workers who often experience exploitation, precarious working conditions, and lack of basic protections, are not unlike the oppressions faced by marginalized folks in Kingston and beyond. The power structures that perpetuate these inequalities are the same, and we must challenge them on all fronts.
As a member of PSAC 901 and a PhD student in the Global Development Studies department, I have been particularly troubled by the online rhetoric that is actively erasing these critical intersections. While PSAC 901’s struggle for liveable wages and fair working conditions are undoubtedly at the heart of this strike, we cannot deny that workers’ rights are human rights. By standing in solidarity with one another, we show that struggles for justice are interconnected and that no fight for equality can be won in isolation.
Dani Mexner
First-year PhD candidate in the Department of Global Developmental Studies
Why I wouldn’t recommend Queen’s University—an open letter to Queen’s istration
As I approach the end of my third-year as an undergraduate student, and graduate school looms closer, friends from other universities have begun asking me whether I would recommend Queen’s University for their graduate studies.
Upon meeting me, you would expect me to be an enthusiastic ambassador for the school. After all, this institution has allowed me to earn competitive grades, build lasting friendships, and partake in a variety of interesting clubs and committees. At the beginning of my second year, I actually paid money to serve as an ASUS Orientation Leader in an effort to share my initial excitement about the University.
However, in spite of what my background may suggest, due to recent events that have taken place at this institution, I’m unable to in good conscience recommend that my friends attend Queen’s University.
My upset with the University first began last year, with the announcement of dramatic austerity measures, including widespread budget cuts, layoffs, and hiring freezes. While this issue could inspire an entire letter in and of itself, what I will focus on here is the more immediately threatening issue of Queen’s University’s istrative failure in negotiating with its employee unions, more specifically PSAC 901, Unit 1.
I have been embarrassed, shocked, and dismayed hearing tales of how the Queen’s University istration has gone about the negotiation process. Bargainers have been reported as having shown up to meetings late—when they have bothered to show up at all—acting both apathetic and unprepared.
Perhaps there is some sort of outlandish excuse for the University’s budgetary issues, or its inability to offer its graduate students liveable funding packages, but what I am positive of is that there is no excuse for Queen’s University’s inability to show its employees a basic amount of respect and dignity.
On March 19, 2025, as I am writing this letter, there is an air of confusion and fear among the undergraduate population. People are unsure whether their essays will be marked, their exams will be cancelled, or if the classes they paid to attend will ever resume.
This morning, in response to such anxiety, the Office of the Principal did not meet the demands of the strikers, or provide students with any sort of concrete guidance regarding next steps, but instead sent a school-wide email attempting to fear-monger and villainize the picket line. The letter references supposed students “feeling targeted and intimidated” by the picket and their alleged “attacks.”
While I can only speak to the personal experiences of myself and my friends, when face-to-face with the strikers, we have never been met with anything but kindness and respect. The people at these protests are not ruthless invaders or violent actors, but the very same teaching assistants who have guided us through particularly tough assignments, engaged with us in fascinating discussions about our lectures, and have ultimately allowed me to succeed at Queen’s University over these past three years.
If the University istration is hoping that their students will come to blame the strikers, I have bad news for them—they have accepted smarter students than they thought. Over the past year, we have watched as the Queen’s University istration has continuously and repeatedly failed its students, its employees, and its own reputation, and we clearly recognize this as another one of its failures.
To the istration of Queen’s University—respect your workers, respect your students, and respect your reputation. Have a little more comion for the employees who allow your university to run, and the students who pay your salaries. Recall, and truly reflect upon, what you would like your legacy at this institution to be.
I would really like, one day, to be able to recommend Queen’s University again.
Sincerely,
Yael Rusonik
ArtSci ’26
Tags
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be ed, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to [email protected].