SENS Bargaining Committee Election 2023

Voting

How? The election for bargaining committee will be conducted via online ballot.
Who? All SENS members in good standing working in the spring 2023 semester or who have worked in the last two years are eligible to vote.
When? Ballots will be emailed on March 20th. Voting will close at midnight on March 24th. Election results will be announced on March 28th.

Composition of Committee. All voters may vote for a total of ten candidates, selecting four from NSSR, two from SPE, two from Parsons, and two from Lang. This breakdown roughly mirrors the number of SENS members in each of the New School's schools.

Candidates & Statements

NSSR - 4 Positions

Aaron Berman, Philosophy - I have been continuously involved with SENS organizing since I first came to the New School in 2017. I was active in our first strike and contract campaign before being a unit worker and have since been a TA/TF and RA in multiple departments. I am a member of the local 7902 joint council and a member of UAWD, the reform caucus within UAW that is working to get our union into fighting shape at the regional national scales. In addition to labor organizing, I have been involved in student, anti-capitalist, abolitionist, migrant, and gender justice organizing in various organizations since 2011. I want to make sure that we approach bargaining in a transparent, rank and file focused fashion, that builds our power and secures significant gains for all of our members.

Andrew (Andy) Carr, Politics - After the last several months, like many others, I have more interest than ever in upcoming negotiations with the University. I hope some of my particular skills can be of use toward that end and worthy of your support. First and foremost, I am one of relatively few graduate students with a legal background (UC Law San Francisco '19, plus prior work in the compliance field). As such, I am familiar with contracts, negotiations, and how legal jargon can be used against nonspecialists – or workers broadly. I would be proud to represent this community and fight for what its members have long deserved.

Danielle Twiss, Economics - As an economist and someone with experience organizing, I believe I would be a really valuable asset to the Bargaining Committee. Before starting my masters here, I was working in labor organizing and labor research, as well as volunteering with Amazon Labor Union. Last semester, I was active on the picket line and learned a lot from listening to experienced organizers fighting for part time faculty. I'm really passionate about our union and I think that this year's contract fight will be crucial to the future of our university and to ensuring a just living standard for student workers.

Maya Herman, Sociology - Hello everyone! My name is Maya Herman, and I'm a 4th year PhD student in the Sociology Department (NSSR). I'm excited to run for the BC and represent the needs of working parents and international students regarding job security and working conditions. As an international student and a mother, I know firsthand the challenges student workers face at TNS. The anxiety around employment and fear of unemployment harms our mental health and well-being. That's why I want to push for more reassurance in having steady jobs. It's crucial for international students who rely mainly on TNS for work. Additionally, I'm passionate about pushing the TNS administration to provide maternity/parental leave for student workers. As a working mother myself, I understand the impact that this could have on the lives of student workers. It's a life-changing benefit possible under NYS laws, and we must fight for it. I have valuable skills that would make me an effective BC member. I'm highly communicative, approachable, and committed to achieving goals. I'm also a good collaborator and have experience working with other students to represent their needs and demands to the administration and faculty. As a ULEC TA and RA for multiple semesters, I was always a proud union member. I also served as a Sociology Student Association Representative and DAC member during the pandemic's first year. These experiences taught me that the administration doesn't understand our challenges and needs and that an organized student body can make a difference. As a BC member, I would work tirelessly to represent our demands and fight for a better contract. Finally, becoming a mother has reshuffled my priorities and time. Still, I am committed to my studies and involvement in TNS's political life. I understand the importance of this position and would be honored to represent our collective claims.

Michael Endrias, Psychology - I am an aspiring lawyer who would ideally like to represent workers against their employers in the future. Entering into this process of collective bargaining would provide me the hands-on practice in such immediate and vital circumstances to approach labor advocacy, in combination with my current foundation of knowledge regarding legal know-how, dispute resolutions tactics, and bureaucratic paperwork. I believe fully in the rights of student workers and in this growing age of disconnect across the world’s universities between leadership and students/staff/faculty, it is more important than ever to protect and expand our abilities to fight. I have the essential skills to represent effectively the members of our union in bargaining, including those on the periphery due to identity or circumstances.

School of Public Engagement - 2 Positions

Charlotte Peyton Hudek, Public & Urban Policy - Increasingly, workers are left intentionally in the dark about just how valuable of an asset they are to the institutions they serve. The reality, though, is that academic student workers bring tremendous value to our places of work. We are a class of highly educated workers with incredibly specialized skills in performing research, teaching, and liaising between faculty and students. Academic student workers are critical in bridging the power gaps that exist in higher education, and we need to be acknowledged -- and compensated -- accordingly. My decision to attend The New School came from my experiences in organizing for the rights of sex workers and conducting research for labor councils, which instilled in me a desire to continue my education at a school that values the rights of workers and the intersectional approaches needed to achieve labor justice. I would be honored to serve on the SENS Bargaining Committee, working to assure our school practices what it teaches by providing student workers a fair, just, and dignified contract.

Isis Moon Gamble, Public & Urban Policy - As a SENS union member, I have been a Teaching Assistant, a Research Assistant, and will be a Teaching Fellow in Fall 2023. I have extensive experience being a student worker, here at TNS and at other institutions. I am extremely passionate about union organizing, and currently serve as a student representative of my doctoral program inspired by demands we made following the PT faculty strike. I have been involved in organizing meetings with faculty, creating curriculum changes, and advocating on behalf of students. I believe that I have the institutional knowledge, organizing and liaison experience, and communicating tools that are necessary for bargaining and negotiating a new contract-- in many ways, I feel like this is the logical next step in my progression as a student organizer and representative. I am extremely passionate about democratic decision making and representing the needs of student workers. I have stood in solidarity with other graduate school unions while they negotiated new contracts and am excited to do the same at my own school. I am inspired by the power and generative spirit of my peers and hope to center that energy (along with their needs) in this process. I am knowledgeable, organized, experienced, and inspired.

Zoe Melo, Public & Urban Policy - During my entire student life I was very active as a student leader and later a community organizer for housing movements. I have a legal background and a decade using negotiation and non litigation tool to manage different conflict, including extreme situation such as the risk of eviction of informal settlements with hundreds of families. Currently the new school is my community and I am not only a student, but a worker here. I believe that my socialist principles along with my intense activism and professional background make me an ideal candidate to compose the bargaining committee and fight along my peers to bring better working conditions for us all!

Parsons - 2 Positions

Erin Dowding, Design and Curatorial Studies - I am a proud member of our SENS-UAW union for student workers at The New School. Upon receiving an offer to work as a Teaching Assistant, knowing that there was union representation and organization was a key point in my accepting the position and feeling positive about working at The New School. I am a MA candidate who has returned to school after 17 years of working as a public school educator for the New York City Department of Education and those years were loyally spent as a rank and file member of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Being a part of the UFT ensured rights, wellbeing, and justice not only for myself, but the thousands of education professionals across New York City. It was working for this larger group and to keep our union strong that I served as a UFT Chapter Leader for five years at my school. That experience taught me how to advocate for my fellow teachers, negotiate with administration, uphold beneficial teaching conditions, and ultimately work collaboratively to make our school and community stronger through working from the bottom up. After two decades of working in education, poor pay, ineffective benefits, the horrors of bureaucracies, and anti-union actions and rhetoric is nothing new to me. Yet, the actions and treatment of The New School towards its Part-Time Faculty and the great TNS community was appalling and was ruthless in a personal way. The dark and ugly weeks of TNS’s administration and trustees during the PTF strike was juxtaposed with the beauty and commitment of the community that came together to support the Part-Time Faculty fighting for a just contract. I was inspired by the strengthening of union awareness, support, and the union itself. As was often shouted during the strike, “Working conditions are learning conditions,” and as both a student of and worker for The New School, I want to join the SENS Bargaining Committee to make these conditions live up to the values and ideals that brought me to the university in the first place and ensure that those currently working for The New School and those will in the future have their rights protected. There is never a wrong time to fight for the goals of a union but with the SENS-UAW contract coming to an end in the summer of 2023, I want to use my experience, knowledge, commitment and skills to contribute to a new contract that meets the needs of our changing community and membership.

Zeshan Khalid, Design & Technology - As an international student, I've noticed that student workers get less exposure to The New School's opportunities and that there aren't many jobs available for them. I want more employment, protection, health benefits, and opportunities for international students.

Eugene Lang - 2 Positions

Emanuel Auerbach-Baidani, Liberal Arts/Fine Arts - Having studied at the school for four years, with another year and a half to go, I feel very connected to the school and its community and would like to work to make it a better working environment for myself and my fellow students. Studying in multiple schools and in both undergrad and graduate programs I have a wide understanding of the different schools and I believe would be able to provide a varied perspective of different academic workers across the university. The part-time faculty strike had a big impact on me. I was on the picket line every day and was heavily involved in student organizing, in both Student Faculty Solidarity, the occupation of the UC and One New School. The events of the last semester fueled me with a passion to continue the fight for worthy working conditions. I am also interested to learn. I am an international student and my political experience in America does not involve as much labour related matters. This would a good opportunity to learn and gather experience labour organizing.

Vic Walsh, Literature - I am currently an undergraduate Research Assistant at pursuing a BA at Eugene Lang College, as well as a BFA student at Parsons. During the part-time faculty strike, I followed contract negotiations closely, was on the picket line nearly every day, and participated heavily in related student organizing. With the SENS contract expiring, I now have the opportunity to get even more deeply involved with these processes and my own branch of the union. Though I am graduating Spring 2023, I continue to care deeply about the working conditions at this university, and would like to remain involved in efforts to improve them. Being on the SENS Bargaining Committee will also provide me with an opportunity to learn a lot about union organizing and contracts, experience that I can take with me into future jobs and labor organizing.