On June 5, a graduate student worker stood in front of a crowd of peers to speak outside of the Kerr Administration Building. They made their speech clear from the start.

“You know, I’m getting real sick of having to stand out here and yell about things six months on from the strike.” said graduate student Luke during a Picket March. “They screw us out of what we rightfully fought for. Until we had to come out here and fight just to uphold the terms of our contract.”

On December 10, an agreement was made between Oregon State University and the Coalition of Graduate Employees to ratify their contract. This came after a term-long strike in the Fall 2024, which left many undergrad students struggling academically due to lack of lecture time and office hours. Only coming to a halt after negotiations of raise was reached near the end of the term.

“But it took a month for the administration to fill out their DocuSign signatures, which didn’t seem suspicious to us at the time. We went back to work. But then it turned out they’re using that as an excuse to not pay a certain amount of workers,” said Austin Bosgraaf, a graduate student and CGE media representative. He continued,”About 65 graduate workers did not get back pay amounting to perhaps $17,000, maybe more that the university is withholding. Due to their interpretation of the ratification rate.”

This course of action from OSU has led to the Thursday picket line outside of Kerr building. Marching loops around the building, chanting lines such as “Seventeen thousand up in smoke, pennies for you, for us no joke” and many others that targeted multiple administrators such as Emily Farrell and Jayathi Y. Murthy; OSU’s president. The protest went from noon till 2 p.m., ending with the CGE taping a letter of reprimand to the front door of the Employee and Labor Relations office.

The letter itself included a list of actions OSU had taken that broke the contract. Then later stating “Your conduct was in violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. To impress upon you the seriousness of your conduct, we are issuing this letter of reprimand. You are expected to conduct yourself in a professional manner which includes complying with all the relevant and legally-binding bargaining agreements.”

OSU’s Media Relations Director Misty Edgecomb gave a statement for OSU saying, “OSU values the hard work of our Coalition of Graduate Employees, and we were pleased to reach agreement with the union. We’re now working to resolve this matter, as the union has progressed the discussion to arbitration. OSU’s dual goal remains both honoring the important work of the graduate employees and meeting our responsibility to be a steward of public funds and tuition dollars.”

Lauren Nelson, another graduate student on the line, had more to say about OSU’s behavior. “They were contentious from the beginning, even something as simple as like ground rules… as it has been mentioned a couple times today, management didn’t come with a whole lot of proposals on their side. They would strike a lot of stuff, but they wouldn’t propose a lot of stuff.”

Bosgraaf also added, “OSU was saying that, you know, CGE should’ve known that the contract wasn’t ratified and that we could have just not come back to work until January 10th if we wanted to. They’re saying that that was our fault, and they are currently fighting us on it saying that these workers don’t deserve to get paid.”

Negotiations from both sides have been ongoing. Arbitration and legal battles are currently being discussed by multiple members of the CGE with no end in sight.