The winter holidays are a time for celebration. A time to reflect. A time to rest. As we all know, this year, we are having to find new ways to toast to the end of the year, to recognize the year’s achievements, and to honor the ways in which we have endured and remained resilient in midst of the challenges of the historic COVID-19 pandemic.
This 2020 holiday season, members of the Coalition for Academic Justice at the University of Arizona (CAJUA) and its newly birthed union, the United Campus Workers Arizona (UCWA), Local 7065, recognize and celebrate all of the workers at the University of Arizona.
We honor and celebrate the university’s custodial workers who have spent countless hours trying to keep the campus safe and clean. We recognize also that some of them were promised hazard pay but never received it.
We acknowledge the sacrifices of the custodial staff, predominantly Latina women, who have been forced to take on additional work, sometimes at great personal risk (when they were asked to deliver COVID testing samples), sometimes getting hurt on the job, and many times getting paid just over minimum wage despite decades of service to the university.
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We honor and celebrate the students involved in the #BlackLivesMatter movement who challenged administrators of the University of Arizona for their lack of attention and commitment to Black students on campus. We commend Black students and the Coalition of Black Students and Allies (COBA) for calling for the defunding of the UA Police Department.
We honor and celebrate Native SOAR and VOICE students who stood up to UA President Robert C. Robbins and Provost Liesl Folks, and who challenged them to make the university a more compassionate and inclusive space; a space that resides on the ancestral lands of the Tohono O’odham Nation and Pascua Yaqui Tribe. We support them in demanding that the university go beyond a land acknowledgment.
We honor and celebrate the ad hoc/campus committees that grew out of the CAJUA’s pressuring of the Faculty Senate, and the committee members who called attention to the absence of democratic governance and transparency with respect to the acquisition of Ashford University and the university’s financial status. We recognize those who worked toward creating a culture of accountability.
We honor and celebrate the thousands of staff workers who provided unwavering support to students, faculty and administrators, and who did so without receiving recognition or thanks, and who instead endured pay cuts and furloughs. Your important labor helped keep the university running.
We honor and celebrate the work of undergraduate and graduate student employees, from teaching assistants, to research assistants, to those working in support positions such as resident assistants, who worked to help keep dormitory residents safe.
We honor and celebrate the instructors and faculty members who worked tirelessly during the fall semester to retool their classes to provide the best quality instruction possible, and who guided students as they navigated one of the most difficult semesters on record.
We honor and celebrate members of the Tucson and Southern Arizona community who challenged the university leadership regarding its misguided decision to bring back thousands of students to campus in the fall, putting the greater Tucson community’s public health at tremendous risk.
And we honor and celebrate all UA students who stuck with it, who did not give up, and who finished the semester in the best way that they could, given the difficult circumstances of mostly distanced and online learning.
As we look toward 2021, members of the CAJUA and UCWA want all UA employees, students, and the members of the wider community to know that we will continue to honor and celebrate your work, and we will do our best to support you as we create a better, more compassionate and more inclusive UArizona.
