Sorry: A little PTSD flashbacking from my travels with the MLA; however, these are for real:

Paradoxical Corpographies: Towards an Ethics of Inscription
Allegory, Allegoresis, and the Hermeneutics of Social Networks
All the World’s a Brothel: Metaphysics of the Text and Cultural Economy in the Information Age
The Obama Model and Britain: A Doxological Inquiry into the Rhetoric and Reception of Strategic Identification in the 2008 American Presidential Election.
Material Possessions: Producing and Performing Race and Empire in American Culture, 1820-1865
Critique of Contemporary NeoImperialisms Through the Trope of Travel
Levels of Response in Experiential Conceptualizations of Neighborhood: The Potential for Multiple Versions of this Place Construct
The Concept of Self‐Reflexive Intertextuality in the Works of Umberto Eco
Home & Other Myths: A Lexicon of Queer of Inhabitation.
Neoconcretism and the Making of Brazilian National Culture, 1954-1961

If the model is apprenticeship rather than employment, then Yale does have some obligation to help the students it trains find jobs. Only to help its actual students, of course–the imaginary neoconundrumizers will always find employment stoking conservative fever dreams.

What *are* the qualifications, now?

From 1995: “Since GESO claims to represent graduate students in the humanities and social sciences only, graduate students in the natural sciences and the professional schools were not included on the list, Weinbaum said.”

From 2003: “Behind a curtain of anonymity, the GESO elites devised an ambiguous definition of voting eligibility based on the “mentoring of undergraduates.” The arbitrary definition excluded many science and medical graduate students, most of whom oppose unionization.”

Then pursue something more palatable; the job mkt is not Yale’s responsibility.

I was lunching with a biochem prof today slummin’ from Cantabrigia: He finds GESO’s planks risible, esp. with regard to 7th years in the “arts.” He noted that, in his field, grads past their freshness date (denoted “g-classic” in emails) are not uncommon in the sciences — because real research takes time — but, of course, their projects results in grants that support the lab, not suck resources from the academy.

He also happened to note that he must sometimes convince students to finish their programs and NOT jump onto the biotech bandwagon w/o their doctorates…

Just because one person believes ecocritical neoconunundrums in gender performativity of postcolonial Belizian brothels worthy of study doesn’t mean that someone else should pay for it to the nth year (or at all, some might argue). Now, if you were say, a put-upon anti-Stratfordian , I might have more sympathy…

The sciences are not excluded from GESO.

Seventh year because of the brutality of the academic job market. Most can complete a dissertation in five or six years, but the percentage of Ph.D.s whom Yale can expect to place in academic jobs in their fifth year (especially in the humanities) is very, very small.

“‘Holloway, who earned his Ph.D. from the University in 1995 said that in those days, even Yale’s full financial stipend did not meet the cost of living in New Haven.” Poppycock. No, seriously: absolute bullfeathers, bunkum and bosh.The stipend was so generous, smart students took the leftover and invested in the stock market…”

Seriously? Invested what was left over in equities? That was meant as irony, right? I wasn’t there then, but I doubt if any of the money went into the equity market.

No one is forced to attend Yale, and the grad students receive extremely generous financial aid packages. Their education, which will lead to comfortable employment and rich benefits, is delivered at no cost to them. Given that most grad students will become professors themselves one day, it is reasonable to expect them to gain teaching experience under the guidance and mentorship of the faculty. Their teaching responsibilities are part of the education experience, and do not warrant unionization.

Alum 1995

Just to add to this: it would also be nice if this article mentioned the many graduate students who are categorically excluded from GESO (i.e. folks in the sciences, professional schools, non-PhD candidates in GSAS, etc.) Many do not support the “graduate student union,” which the article does not make clear.

It’s also disingenuous for Yale to pretend that GESO, silly as it is, had no role in the institution’s making things better for grad students. Just as it took Princeton’s making a major move to get Yale to adjust its formerly grossly insufficient undergraduate financial aid, it’s hard not to believe that GESO making a nuisance of itself didn’t get Yale finally to act on the grad student problems that everyone knew were there.

But the real labor injustice at Yale (and its peers) is the treatment of adjuncts. 7th-year students (who either failed to finish on time or who are holding off finishing because their first try at the job market failed) seem to be basically treated as adjuncts (i.e. fairly poorly). If GESO were serious about addressing labor injustice it would work to unionize a population of adjuncts and 7th-years. Its failure to do so suggests strongly that GESO is more just a group of idealistic students being used as patsies by Yale’s other union locals.