#sorry its been a while

rkrose‌:

if this year was going to be rose’slast year at royal, she had to go out with a bang. well, that’s what she decidedher approach to the new year was going to be. she had the intention to give it her all and once again, her training had come and consumedher. she spent her time at seocho and royal well, putting in time and actual effort into perfecting her daily routines along with this month’s evaluation, which rose was actuallyenjoying for once. she couldn’t really pin point why but something about this one felt different. somaybe that was a good thing. 

amidst their evaluation preparation, shiah approachesan unsuspecting rose who is neck deep in prep work, which usually involves her memorizing choreography. her stern expression changes the moment she sees the older female walk into the room. “ah, shiah~” rose chimes, brushing her hair back from her face, waving a little. but shiah is forward, much more forward than rose is. “uh, i guess?” rose asks, raising an eyebrow. she glances around herself at the studio she was sat in. once, she wouldn’t be caught deadstaying back late, but now she had nothing else to do. she had to stay back and practice, rose had to prove herself and royal that she needed this.

“somaekandnoraebang, huh?” rose asks, reaching for her drink bottle, which she takes a swig from. a night out probablywouldn’thurt, it might motivate her to work a little harder. she just doesn’twant to push herself too hard tonight, because she’ll regretit tomorrow.

“yes, both of those things.” shiah was trying hard to remain assertive in this request of her’s, and she felt slightly uneasy that rose hadn’t said an affirmative yes yet. she holds for a moment, another, and then… she melts, shuffling over with drooped shoulders and wrapping her arms around rose from behind, burying her face into the back of the other girl’s shoulder. 

“pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?”

shiah typically didn’t get clingy or whip out light aegyo, but again, she was desperate here. “that boot camp was awful, and life is awful, and we deserve some fun. i’ll buy?” shiah was never worried about money, so offering to treat the other came pretty easily. she’d make good on it too. “i’ll help you organize all your sheet music and stuff too. come on, this is a really good deal here, you should totally take it!” she props her head up, craning it to look at rose and she beams at her. if this thousand watt smile didn’t work, shiah didn’t know what would. 

she pulls back and take rose’s hand with both of her own, lightly trying to drag her out of the room while bouncing on her feet. “please, please, please~” shiah was no quitter, so she wasn’t going to give up without a fight here.

If there’s one thing we know about power, it’s that it is most effective when it is obscured; we do not question what we cannot see, what we take for natural. This is something which the UC system depends on, positioning itself as a space of accessible education and “inclusive excellence” while refusing to engage with the way that the very infrastructure maintaining the UC is inherently antithetical to these goals. Wildcat strikers and organizers for the COLA4ALL movement currently sweeping through the UC system have done much to excavate these oppressive systems and contradictions foundational to the UC through the fight for a COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) and the simultaneous refusal to disconnect this specific goal from the need to address the broader violence of the institution.

For those unfamiliar, the movement initially started at UC Santa Cruz. UCSC graduate students, like nearly all UC graduate students, are rent burdened. During the Fall 2019 quarter, graduate student instructors began a wildcat grade strike, calling attention to the contradiction between the university’s dependence on graduate student labor to function and the university’s refusal to provide graduate students with a reasonable standard of living through a refusal to submit grades. The movement quickly spread, and now spans all 10 UC campuses (many of which are on a full or partial strike). COLA4ALL’s overall vision, taken from the inter-campus website StrikeUniversity.org, centers free and accessible public education for everyone (without student debt), critical thinking and skills that are not bound to the imperatives of the market, replacing competitive models with communities of care and shared struggle, brilliance that refuses hierarchical models of “experts,” and the decolonization, democratization, queering, and abolishing of the university.

The UC has responded to COLA organizers with violence which is deeply revealing of the anti-black, carceral power foundational to the entire system. Militarized police presence has been prevalent at COLA picket lines, walk outs, and other organizing events. During a COLA rally on February 20, 2020 at UC Irvine campus police officer Trish Harding tackled and arrested a Black alumna who was not even involved with COLA and simply on campus trying to pick up her transcripts (please sign the UCI Black Student Union’s petition demanding accountability). UC-wide, many students have been harassed, assaulted, and arrested for daring to tell administration that they cannot survive under “business as usual”.

Recently a student in one of my classes asked the professor about their stance on UC graduate students organizing for a COLA; the professor said that it was up to us as their students, asking if we would be willing to have our grades withheld. Framing the issue as one of undergraduate willingness to go without grades fundamentally misrepresents what is going on. None of us want our grades withheld. Many of us cannot afford to have our grades withheld. But the consequences of having our grades withheld only exist within the context of institutional intransigence, not graduate students going on a wildcat strike.

It is imperative that graduate students be paid fairly and the university reevaluates the oppressive model it is currently operating under.

One of the things that stands out to me in the way that COLA4ALL is discussed is the emphasis put on the fact that the strike is illegal because UAW 2865, the graduate student union, has not voted to strike. As those of us who have critically engaged with criminality and the construction of “illegal”, part of the discourse surrounding illegality is an undermining of the value and contributions of those who are positioned as “illegal.” This is something which is, of course, multiply impactful to those who are already criminalized, as we can see clearly in police response to Black alumni existence on campus. The law is so often unjust and frequently sides with those who hold power and money. Why is it illegal for workers to organize outside of a singular union? Why is it legal for the UC system to put union busting measures into their contracts? Why do we talk about the wildcat strikes in terms of legality instead of engaging critically with the University as an institution?

The extraction of wealth from students is central to the current operation of the UC. This is evident in the high cost of tuition and the rate of student debt, and further heightened through the multitude of ways in which the UC system profits off of its students; while we can think about this in the insane cost of parking, the use of work-study to maintain a labor force of minimum wage workers, the denial of sick pay to undergraduate student workers, the tokenization and marketing of students, and the obviously inflated prices at on-campus stores like The Hill or Zot-n-Go, no where is it more apparent than in housing. Focusing on graduate students, since COLA4ALL is currently focused on improving pay and labor conditions for graduate students, not only are the majority of students extremely rent burdened, but many are living in “subsidized” campus housing, paying large portions of their paychecks back to the very institution already underpaying them and exploiting their labor. It very much feels like company scrip.

Under the social distancing/remote learning model being deployed in response to COVID-19 many of these already untenable circumstances are only being heightened. Housing insecurity, a major problem for many undergraduate and graduate students alike, is significantly increased through the rise in un-and-under-employment resulting from shelter-in-place closures; meanwhile, the UC system is encouraging students to leave campus while doing nothing to assist those who live in off-campus housing who are now not only rent burdened and frequently living in highly crowded living quarters during a pandemic, but given no option to break their lease without penalty and are still required to somehow continue paying rent despite changes in their ability to work.

Similarly, while some campus employees are now able to telecommute to work the administration obviously has no intention of allowing those working in food services, maintenance, custodial services, etc to “conference in”, leaving them at continued risk while prioritizing the safety of those in higher wage positions. Additionally, graduate students and professors without access to the technology needed to teach from their homes are being encouraged to continue to come to campus and teach from classroom spaces. What this means is that those with the resources (stable housing, internet access, a computer with a webcam and mic) can work safely from home, while the most marginalized (those most in need of a COLA) will have to risk exposure.

Furthermore, many telecommuting workers are being told they must sign a contract which includes the provision that employees are “responsible for establishing and maintaining a safe, ergonomically sound, and secure work environment. The employee will establish a functional workspace, including appropriate computer and communications equipment within their telecommuting worksite.” Forcing workers to sign this contract creates a situation where the UC is not obligated to ensure students/workers have access to either the tools they need to work remotely or paid leave, and further establishes that the UC is not responsible for work-related damage to the health and personal equipment of workers. It also makes it possible for the UC to fire those who are not able to independently establish and maintain said work environment.

The level of exploitation and discriminatory violence on this campus and in the UC system is unethical and untenable. The fact that a billion dollar institution would rather negatively impact graduate and undergraduate students, would rather pay for a militarized police presence at the picket line, would rather heighten the risk to their most marginalized students and employees, would rather arrest a Black alumna than pay graduate student workers a living wage speaks for itself. This is not about whether undergraduate students can afford to go without grades, it is about refusing a system where the interests of graduate student workers and the interests of undergraduate students are falsely constructed as oppositional.

The stakes are too high not to speak candidly. I hope you will consider openly standing in solidarity with COLA4ALL. 

100121. notes from this week— started classes monday and it’s already been crazy busy. might just be posting notes for a while unless I can find time for other stuff :,)

I strongly suggest, my dearest friends, that if you have anything to spare that you consider making care packages for your elderly friends and neighbors.
Be safe, of course. Be considerate and courteous. There’s still an illness rampant in the streets. But consider how difficult it is for them to get out to stores and if they are able, how naked and bare they are. 

If you have a roll of TP you can afford to part with (you can, unless you’re a twat who’s wiping your ass with half a roll of TP every time you drop a deuce), add that to the pack. If you have a couple cans of protein – tuna, pork and beans, chicken, salmon, etc – put that in there.  Sanitary pads can be used by anyone who has incontinence, add two or three (especially if they’re overnights or heavys). Any sort of sanitizing products, portion it into a ziploc or a small bottle and share. A couple bottles of water. Napkins you might be hoarding in your glove compartment, if you have a car. 

People are afraid. The elderly are often alone, with very few people to rely on.  We shouldn’t have to be.  Remember kindness.

Stay safe out there.

고 있다  is added to a verb to indicate that the action is still going on, kinda like adding “ing” to a verb . just remove the 다 from the end of the basic form of the verb and add 고 있다  For  Example :

가다 = 가고 있어요

공부하다 = 공부하고 있어요

Example sentences             

방용국이 웃고 있어요= Yongguk is smiling

문종업이 춤을 추고 있어요 = Jongup is dancing

정대현이 노래하고 있어요 Daehyun is singing

You can also use it in Past tense form too : ~고 있었어요 its like saying “I was doing____ in the past”

For example: = 나는 내 사업에 신경을 쓰고 있었어요. 그럼 내가 k-pop 을 찾았 어.

(I was minding my own business and then I found k-pop)