Over the last year, campuses across the country have seen fervent protest as students call administrators to account for their lackluster efforts on diversity and equity, and academic workers demand that the labor of teaching and research be recognized. Yale University, where I was a graduate student from 2009-2015, has been at the epicenter of both of these campaigns.

In the fall of 2015, students of color and allies, under the banner NextYale, issued a range of demands including departmental status for Ethnicity, Race, and Migration; increased funding for cultural centers; and the expansion of health services and other resources for low-income, first generation, and undocumented students. At the same time, the Graduate Employees and Student Organization (GESO), the longest-running campaign to form a union of graduate students at a private university, released its fourth majority petition in two years and entered a new phase with the chartering of UNITE HERE Local 33.

When I arrived at Yale in fall 2009, the struggle for racial and gender equity and the union campaign felt like worlds apart. I was well acquainted with the former through undergraduate organizing at the University of Virginia around faculty diversity, granting departmental status to African-American Studies, and ensuring adequate support to students of color. From my perspective at the time, these kinds of projects had nothing to gain from the unionization of graduate students.