"In the long run, the goals of the progressive movement should be to reassert itself," Wehr said. "On a national level, labor could do a better job of asserting the interests of its members."

For graduate students at schools like Yale and UCLA who are just beginning the process of gaining more rights, their goals are centered on their specific schools.

"Right now, we're in the process of surveying our membership and that will determine our agenda [at negotiations with UCLA administrators this summer]," Razza said.

Members of the Yale grad student organization, which is still far from the negotiating table, say they will be concentrating on keeping their issues in the spotlight.

"For the time being, the more visibility we have and the more graduate students we have speaking out on this issue, the harder it is to ignore us," Mitchell said. "We have to keep working until Yale agrees to negotiate with us."

With the continuing dependence on graduate students for teaching in colleges and universities, it seems unlikely that graduate students will stop their fight anytime soon. As Mitchell indicated, the movement won't truly be a success until universities across the nation recognize the rights of all its workers.

"The goal is really to change the process of decision making in the academy so that the decisions respect the rights of all the people who are involved," Mitchell said.