Grad students fight back at Yale: “I’m trying to support myself and my son - but it’s not working"

“I should not have to fight for Yale to respect me but I will keep fighting until they do.”

That’s what Grant Mao, a Chinese citizen, who claims his struggles with depression precipitated his expulsion from the university last April, told the New Haven Register during a recent on-campus demonstration in support of graduate student-employees’ right to form a union. Mao told the Register that the university’s administration “did nothing” to help him with his illness, but was quick to inform him that his health insurance was no longer valid — and that he had 15 days to leave the country. “I’m fighting because I want to get reinstated,” Mao said, “but also because I don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”

According to graduate student-employees and organizers, Mao’s story is not unique. And the allegedly brusque manner with which the administration treated him is, they say, not unusual, either. That’s one of the reasons why those urging Yale to recognize its graduate student-employees’ union are calling on the university to stop an anti-union campaign intended to “intimidate and confuse” graduate school faculty and students, and to agree to a neutral — or “no intimidation” — vote.

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/20/graduate_students_fight_back_at_yale_im_trying_to_support_myself_and_my_son_but_its_not_working/

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I am always shocked when stories like this surface about liberal institutions like Yale University. My friends in New Haven say its not just grad students and adjunct profs getting the short shrift from Yale, but it's their entire hourly-wage support staff too.
Make me shake my head.