This essay examines and reflects on the successful 2017/2018 graduate student labor movement at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). While similar movements have been on the rise, they often receive sporadic attention from popular media and scholarly literature. Although scholars have identified the unequal structural arrangement between graduate students and university administrations, we argue that this power configuration alone cannot account for sustained and successful labor action. Using a photo-essay format, this piece analyzes the ways that emotions, injustice framing, and interaction rituals helped translate structural inequities into actionable grievances at UIUC and situates the UIUC movement within the broader history of graduate labor struggles in America. Additionally, the essay points to the specificities of the UIUC case in light of the recent Janus v. AFSCME decision and discusses how the threat to tuition waivers may be a growing challenge that graduate student unions will face alongside the more classical questions of wages and health benefits. Most importantly, the essay unpacks how a group of students who “would rather be teaching,” came to organize, sustain, and finally emerge as victors in a campus-wide movement.

O’Neill, Brian F., Hany Zayed, and Heba Khalil. 2019. “‘I’d Rather be Teaching’-Transforming Injustice into Action in a Graduate Labor Movement.” Berkeley Journal of Sociology. March 2019: Vol. 63. http://berkeleyjournal.org

• In February 2021, my archive of 439 black and white, 35mm film negatives that I made during this project was acquired by the Urbana Free Library Archives and Special Collections Department in Urbana, Illinois - https://urbanafreelibrary.org/local-history-genealogy/archives-special-collections

• Accession No. 2021-0013