For anyone interested, there's been a growing push for a unionization of graduate student employees. Even NYU has done more than Columbia.

Here's one graduate student's story. To me, the frightening part is not Columbia's policy or the cost to this one student, but that the existence of a union might have made it readily apparent that this would be an issue for the student.

Edit 5/11: Here's the site for getting involved: http://www.columbiagradunion.org/call-to-action/

Edit 8/24: Yesterday the NLRB ruled that grad students do have a right to unionize here at Columbia (and other private universities).

]]-- MitchellSchwartz - 10 May 2016

Wow, thanks for sharing this Mitchell; I was completely unaware. Is there some type of petition going around that you know of?

-- MalcolmEvans - 11 May 2016

Malcolm, I also had no idea until this past week, but apparently this has been an issue for a long time, and little has been done. I'm asking around to see if there's a petition, or some other ways of getting involved. I'll update this page when I hear back.

-- MitchellSchwartz - 11 May 2016

Wow. Interesting

-- BenjaminSanchez - 12 May 2016