Influential 2009: Rana Jaleel

While sitting in the lobby of Bobst Library, fifth-year doctoral student Rana Jaleel made one thing clear: She is part of a much larger whole on campus.

Jaleel, a student in The Program in American Studies at NYU's Graduate School of Arts and Science, is an active member of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee. GSOC is a collective bargaining unit that represents a large number of NYU's graduate employees and is not organized around a hierarchical membership structure.

Among GSOC's primary goals is to push NYU to once again recognize it as a graduate employee union and renew its contract.

In 2002, NYU became the first private university in the U.S. to allow graduate employees to unionize, but when GSOC's contract expired in 2005, the university's decision to not renew it prompted teaching and research assistants to go on a six-monthlong strike.

Although Jaleel had just begun her studies at NYU at the time of the strike, she remembers it well.

"It looked like it was really hard on everybody," she said. "The people who were most involved in it are still affected by it because I think everybody really thought that the university would do the right thing."

Now, four years later, GSOC continues to fight for the same cause, particularly in the midst of an overhaul of financial aid for graduate students.

This semester and last semester, Jaleel was involved in organizing GSOC work-ins, where dozens of members sat in the lobby of Bobst wearing signs and doing their work in an effort to demonstrate that in addition to being students, they are also employees and should have a contract.

"What the university really needs to understand is that graduate employees are savvy people," Jaleel said. "People know what's in their best interest, and that's why they're going to have to deal with the union sooner or later."

Patrick Gallagher, a fourth-year doctoral student in the GSAS Department of Comparative Literature, joined Jaleel in the library during her interview with WSN. A fellow GSOC member, Gallagher shares the same vision as Jaleel and other members.

"[Collective bargaining] has been kind of a major point of my socialization as a graduate student," he said. "I feel like it creates a sense of balance in what otherwise unfortunately is a very top-down situation, and that's what I think a university community needs."

Before attending NYU, Jaleel completed her undergraduate education in creative writing and gender studies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. From there, she went on to receive a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School, where she focused on gender issues and civil rights. During the three-year program, she also worked in Yale's gender and sexuality department.

Jaleel went to law school with the goal of being involved in social justice; she hoped to continue in academia and eventually become a law professor.

"That's exactly why I'm concerned with labor on campus ... it's about what kind of vision you have for a university and how a university ends up running," she said. "I consider universities to be my future work sites, and I want to make sure they're as equitable as possible for everybody who works there."

For Jaleel, that also includes the migrant workers who are constructing the NYU Abu Dhabi campus. In addition to her involvement with GSOC, Jaleel has actively spoken out against what she views as the exploitation of workers in the United Arab Emirates.

"The difference between slavery and what's happening to these people is really, really slight," she said.

The university has denied any exploitation or unfair treatment of workers.

Jaleel has only her dissertation left to complete in order to receive her doctorate. Her dissertation focuses on international legal history and how feminist activism is implemented in international law. She expects to graduate in about a year and a half.

Even after she leaves NYU, Jaleel hopes GSOC maintains a strong vision and sense of action.

"I would like graduate employees and people at NYU to realize that there is a lot of power in working together," she said. "GSOC is nothing if not about collective action."