The Graduate Employees’ 

Organization 
found 
broad 

support for their demands 
for greater accommodations 
against 
COVID-19, 
but 
its 

anti-policing demands became 
a 
lightning 
rod 
issue 
for 

those trying to criticize or 
delegitimize the union’s strike. 

Negotiations between the 

University of Michigan and 
the 
Graduate 
Employees’ 

Organization have been at 
the center of conversation on 
campus since GEO announced 
their strike last Monday in 
protest of the University’s 
COVID-19 response. 

Among the demands were 

calls for a “disarmed and 
demilitarized 
workplace,” 

defunding 
the 
Department 

of Public Safety and Security 
by 50% and reallocating the 
funds to “community-based 
justice initiatives,” and for 
the University to cut all ties 
with the Ann Arbor Police 
Department and Immigration 
and Customs Enforcement.

The 
union 
rejected 
an 

initial offer the University 
made last Wednesday which 
did not address the anti-
policing demands. Following 
the GEO’s extension of their 
strike and the University’s 
subsequent action seeking an 
injunction against the union, 
GEO accepted the University’s 
second proposal to end the 
strike last night. 

According 
to 
GEO’s 

statement following the end 
of 
the 
strike, 
the 
second 

offer included a commitment 
from the University to revise 
the 
Michigan 
Ambassadors 

program and create a policing 
task force to evaluate DPSS and 
make recommendations about 
policing. The task force will 
have representation from both 
the GEO and Students of Color 
Liberation Front, which is a 
coalition of the Black Student 
Union, United Asian American 
Organizations, La Casa, Arab 
Student 
Association 
and 

Students Allied for Freedom 
and Education.

Though the University did 

not satisfy the group’s original 
demands, in their statement, 
GEO framed these changes 
as 
“incremental 
but 
real 

movement.”

“Our victories on policing 

in particular came from our 
members’ refusal to abandon 
these demands by accepting a 
first offer with zero progress 
on them, and, importantly, 
from the work of some of our 
Black members to reorient 

around 
and 
win 
strategic 

first 
victories 
in 
a 
long-

term abolitionist organizing 
campaign,” 
the 
statement 

reads. 

GEO 
member 
Emma 

Soberano said she felt the 
University’s 
willingness 

to address policing was an 
important difference between 
the first and second offers.

“In the first case, when we 

chose to continue the strike, 
what I heard was… that the 
University was not willing 
to 
even 
discuss 
policing,” 

Soberano said. “And the fact 
that we got any movement 
at all is really a testament to 
the power of our coalition 
building.”

The 
University 
initially 

made statements implying that 
policing was not under the 
purview of union negotiations. 
In an initial Sept. 9 email 
regarding the work stoppage, 
Provost 
Susan 
Collins 

stressed that GEO could only 
negotiate matters regarding its 
employment. 

“GEO’s strike is based on 

a number of issues, many of 
which are unrelated to the 
wages, hours, and working 
conditions that define their 
employment 
as 
GSIs,” 
the 

email reads. “Issues that are 
not related to the employment 
of its members are not subjects 
that GEO can negotiate with 
the University.”

In 
a 
schoolwide 
email 

sent 
Sept. 
11, 
University 

President 
Mark 
Schlissel 

wrote 
that 
policing 
issues 

required broader community 
engagement.

“Policing concerns are not 

readily solved through union 
negotiations,” 
Schlissel’s 

email reads.

GEO, 
however, 
argued 

that policing concerns are 
related to their employment 
because of the relationship 
between policing and student 
health. At a press conference 
on 
Wednesday, 
GEO 
Vice 

President 
Erin 
Markiewitz 

spoke to this sentiment.

“Policing, 
even 
when 
it 

does not result in violence, 
negatively affects the health 
of BIPOC and other vulnerable 
populations,” 
Markiewitz 

said. “As it affects the health 
and safety of our members, 
GEO asserts that policing is a 
labor issue and has a place at 
the bargaining table.”

GEO 
member 
Katherine 

White explained the policing 
demands in terms of workplace 
safety.

“The anti-policing demands 

specifically I think addressed 
feelings that Black and Brown 

students had of not feeling safe 
with armed police officers 
around campus,” White said. 
“Safety doesn’t look the same 
for all people, and we should 
be protecting the people who 
don’t feel safe by police.”

Members of the Department 

of Afroamerican and African 
Studies published an op-ed 
Tuesday endorsing the GEO’s 
anti-policing demands.

“We applaud GEO for linking 

their employment demands to 
calls for justice, the protection 
of the health and safety of our 
community and the absolutely 
relevant de-militarization of 
local and campus police,” the 
op-ed reads. 

Similarly, 
in 
an 
op-ed 

published 
Monday, 
faculty 

members from the School of 
Public Health expressed their 
support for GEO, asserting 
that policing is a public health 
issue that can result in harm 
to both physical and mental 
health. The piece specifically 
addresses 
the 
Michigan 

Ambassador program, which 
has 
drawn 
controversy 

resulting in modifications of 
the program by the University. 

Some students questioned 

whether GEO’s initial anti-
policing 
demands 
were 

pragmatic. Engineering senior 
Yilin Yang said while he 
supported the group’s COVID-
19 related demands, he saw the 
policing demands as damaging 
to the group’s platform. 

“I explicitly support GEO’s 

COVID-19 related demands, 
and in my mind, that is by 
far the most important part 
of their platform,” Yang said. 
“The anti-policing demands, 
to me, seem unachievable in a 
purely practical sense. It seems 
to me that GEO is shooting 
itself in the foot by tacking on 
this underthought rider that 
the University can effortlessly 
exploit to discredit the entire 
union-strike movement.”

Yang said his main concern 

with 
the 
anti-policing 

demands was his fear that 
cutting ties with police would 
worsen the spread of COVID-
19 by weakening the Michigan 
Ambassadors’ power to keep 
student gatherings in check.

“It seemed to me like these 

demands 
would 
have 
the 

effect of rendering toothless 
the University’s efforts to 
enforce compliance with local 
and state-level public health 
orders, and that, to me, was 
the biggest red flag that made 
me oppose those particular 
parts of the demands,” Yang 
said. 

Silke-Maria Weineck, chair 

of Comparative Literature and 

professor of German Studies 
and Comparative Literature, 
wrote in an email interview 
with The Daily that, though 
she 
supports 
GEO, 
police 

reform 
is 
a 
conversation 

requiring 
more 
than 
one 

group’s voice to be heard.

“With 
regard 
to 
the 

COVID 
safety 
demands, 

and by contrast, everybody 
would have benefited from 
enhanced testing and from 
true autonomy with regard 
to face to face teaching,” 
Weineck wrote. “But when it 
comes to policing, I may agree 
with GEO’s take, but I know 
many others do not. So I think 
hashing it out will be a long 
collaborative process — I hope 
the university will let it be a 
truly meaningful one.”

But Ashley Lucas, associate 

professor of Theatre & Drama 
and former director of the 
Creative Prison Arts Project, 
wrote in an email to The Daily 
that she was disappointed 
with the way the strike ended. 

“A new task force is not 

an adequate answer to these 
policing concerns, but given 
that it will exist, I hope that 
university 
leadership 
will 

make sure that a member of the 
Carceral State Project faculty 
working group is appointed to 
the task force so that people 
who actually study policing 
can have some influence in 
the coming decisions,” Lucas 
wrote. “The abolishment of 
the ambassador teams is still 
very much needed, as are the 
disarmament of the campus 
police and the severing of 
ties between campus and city 
police.”

Soberano 
also 
expressed 

some 
frustration 
over 
the 

University’s suggestion of a 
task force to address policing 
concerns. 

“As 
many 
people 
have 

pointed out, task forces are 
used 
by 
universities 
and 

other institutions not only to 
put the labor of solving the 
University’s problems onto its 
Black and Brown students — 
who are the ones hurt by these 
problems existing in the first 
place — but also is used to wrap 
up progress in bureaucratic 
hurdles,” Soberano said. 

“But I think the fact that 

they even allowed us a seat 
at the table is a big step. And 
we had to listen to especially 
the Black students in our 
community who were telling 
us, ‘look, we’re afraid of what 
the University will do to us if 
we continue this strike.’”

Daily 
Staff 
Reporter 

Angelina Little can be reached 
at angelit@umich.edu.

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Daily Staff Reporter 

Graduate student strike highlights 
policing, public health relationship

GEO’s demands to defund and reallocate funds from law enforcement 
on campus receive mixed responses, spark conversations and debate

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
2 — Wednesday, September 23, 2020 

 ALEC COHEN/Daily

The Graduate Employees’ Organization accepted the University of Michigan’s proposal.

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