Over the course of the Fall 2018 / Spring 2019 academic year, TRU works in coalition with other groups, including the Hopkins Coalition Against ICE working to end JHU’s contracts with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Students Against Private Police seeking to stop the university’s plans for a police force, and the JHToo movement, formed to support survivors of sexual assault and hold the university accountable for mishandled cases. The year culminates in an over one-month sit-in and occupation of Garland Hall. Hundreds of students and community members participate, in an effort to halt the militarization of the university, and act in solidarity with local groups like West Wednesdays which are organizing against police violence in nearby communities.
Archives: Timeline Stories
Timeline Post Type Description
TRU goes public as the JHU graduate workers’ union for the first time, publicly announcing our intentions to win collective bargaining rights for graduate workers at Hopkins and negotiate a union contract.
Grad workers finally win improvements to health insurance, including vision and dental coverage, as some of PATH’s recommendations are incorporated into new student insurance plans.
TRU’s healthcare campaign culminates in an action delivering hundreds of signed postcards from graduate workers demanding better healthcare. Later in the year, JHU finally introduces parental leave for grad workers, and creates the Provost’s Advisory Team on Healthcare (PATH) to review existing grad health insurance.
In the middle of their summer break, the students of the Humanities Center learn that their department would be shut down as of June 30, 2017. Dean Beverly Wendland makes the decision behind closed doors and without public oversight – stranding students and faculty and setting an extremely dangerous precedent. Throughout the 2016 Fall Semester, TRU and graduate students in the Humanities Center demand clarity and oppose the closure of the distinguished 50-year-old department.
Despite the fact that Johns Hopkins boasts a top-ranking medical school and a world-renowned hospital, many JHU graduate workers find they cannot afford to get sick. So TRU launches a healthcare campaign to address the inadequacy of the current health insurance plan currently offered by the administration.
In the aftermath of a new set of university policies called the “Strategic Plan,” a group of students come together to discuss the implications of the plan. Why did the administration fail to consult or listen to graduate students as they made big decisions around our working conditions? How can we change this? What do other students think about this? How can we build collective power? They start meeting with students from different departments to discuss what they would like to see improved and how they would like to achieve such changes.