"What we would really like to do is to drivetowards a living wage for graduate studentinstructors," Olmsted says. "Currently, gradstudents [in Ann Arbor] don't get paid as well aspublic school teachers in the most impoverishedschool districts where they receive considerablymore per hour than grad students. We feel that ahigher level of compensation is merited."

Wehr added that he sees the graduate studentlabor movement as feeding into a larger,progressive labor movement.

"In the long run, the goals of the progressivemovement should be to reassert itself," Wehr says."On a national level, labor could do a better jobof asserting the interests of its members."

For graduate students at schools like Yale andUCLA who are just beginning the process of gainingmore rights, their goals are centered on theirspecific schools.

"Right now, we're in the process of surveyingour membership and that will determine our agenda[at negotiations with UCLA administrators thissummer]," Razza says.

Members of the Yale grad student organization,which is still far from the negotiating table, saythey will be concentrating on keeping their issuesin the spotlight.

"For the time being, the more visibility wehave and the more graduate students we havespeaking out on this issue, the harder it is toignore us," Mitchell says. "We have to keepworking until Yale agrees to negotiate with us."

With the continuing dependence on graduatestudents for teaching in colleges anduniversities, it seems unlikely that graduatestudents will stop their fight anytime soon. AsMitchell indicates, the movement won't truly be asuccess until universities across the nationrecognize the rights of all its workers.

"The goal is really to change the process ofdecision making in the academy so that thedecisions respect the rights of all the people whoare involved," Mitchell says