Oral History Interview with Rohin Gosh
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This repository may contain outdated, harmful, or triggering terms and/or content- Could we start with your name and position at the University?
- My name is Rohin Gosh.
- I am a sophomore studying in the
- College of Arts and Sciences, undergraduate, sophomore.
- And do I have permission to record today's conversation?
- Sure.
- Yes.
- And is there anything in particular you want to cover, or
- don't want to cover? Not anything, you know, really in
- particular, I think kind of just broadly, my kind of main rule was
- organizing students.
- To support the staff, adjunct and
- grad union campaigns through AU YDSA.
- So today is Monday March 20th 2023.
- I am Gabriella Folsom, I'm with Rohin Gosh on the quad at American
- University.
- It is around 12 o'clock and we're
- conducting an oral history interview for the preserving the
- picket line AU Staff Union Archive.
- Thank you for joining us here today.
- Thank you.
- How would you describe your
- involvement in the union and/or the strike?
- So, I was, so I came in, you know, in the Fall of 2021 is a freshman
- undergraduate student.
- I pretty quickly started getting
- involved with folks who are organizing, there's a reorganizing
- the YDSA, Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter at
- AU very quickly, supporting the then and its early stages with
- still ongoing Staff Union, contract campaign was very big
- priority from very early on.
- And sort of my first big, big
- Campus actions that I was participating in were the staff
- Union actions, in October of 2021.
- And that was kind of my
- introduction to both labor and community work in DC as well as on
- this campus particularly.
- And over the course of the
- following months, including very dramatically in August, we had a
- lot of work that we put in to make sure that students were informed
- about what was going on that we were coordinating with the Staff
- Union, Adjunct Union, Grad Union to make sure that what we were
- doing is students were responsive from a campaign standpoint to
- their needs, and that we were turning out students and really
- showcasing that student support for that contract fight.
- Stellar, and the week of the strike?
- I think you probably weren't on campus.
- I was there.
- I came in that Thursday night, and
- I was there kind of all of Friday, while everything was going on.
- So yeah, I got the grand finale.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Could you walk me through what the week of the strike was like for
- you? Yeah.
- So, you know, some of my friends had already been on campus, so we
- were kind of coordinating remotely.
- What was what we were doing, planning out, right, flyering
- freshman, that type of stuff.
- So, you know, picketing by day
- flyering by night type of stuff.
- I wasn't directly involved in that
- because I was still off campus, but then, you know, once I was on
- campus that morning, I walked out to the, the picket line.
- And pretty early in the morning, you know at least my morning was
- when convocation happened and the freshman, you know, very famously
- walked out.
- And I remember that that
- particular moment I was outside and for a while, I think I didn't
- quite understand what was going on.
- Couldn't really hear anything was so loud in the tunnel or sometimes
- a sound tunnel effect.
- It was one of the most incredible
- things I'd seen, that many students walking out.
- I remember my first year advisor who's also like picket line
- captain I think, title like, in a leadership role in the union,
- broke down crying when he saw so many people walking out.
- It was just an incredible moment.
- And then we started just like
- walking in this big lap around campus.
- We could see like kind of wrapped all the way back around, I emember
- from- I was up over there b,y by the Patel building and, you know,
- stretched all the way back over here, it was awesome.
- And then, yeah, like we were hanging out on, you know, Sylvia
- Burwell's lawn called now, it's become now The People's Lawn
- right? And then, you know, various times
- doing some more picketing on the driveway and things like that.
- And then, right, we kept hearing right, about right?
- We're close to a breakthrough bargaining, came close to a
- breakthrough and then the news came and we walked over to near
- Kerwin where it was going on, and that was just such a beautiful
- moment of the bargaining team walked out with the news that we
- won, that the Staff Union won.
- That's something I'll remember for
- a very long time that it was, you know, at that point, there were
- fewer undergrad students there, on the line.
- It was hot, people were still busy moving in their stuff if they had,
- if they were even on campus at that point.
- I think freshman did their big show in the morning and then we're
- had to get busy moving in and whatever.
- So, but that was just such a amazing day.
- yeah, that sounds really impactful.
- What do you consider to be the effects or the legacy of the
- strike? Yeah, I think that's a bunch of
- big things.
- I mean, obviously the, you know,
- material impact on staff is, is very significant, very important.
- But as far as from the student perspective, I think this really
- built a lot of like working together on this really built a
- lot of relationships between, you know, very active students on
- these issues, that are still lasting to this day and are still
- strengthening now, working on similar labor and community
- issues.
- It was overall just a very
- inspiring experience for everyone involved.
- And it also, I think, built a culture of solidarity among
- students, which I think we're going to be seeing now the next
- few weeks it's really heat up with Local 23 and the dining workers
- and students are going to turn out supporting them just this week in
- Starbucks, I think in front of Starbucks, we're going to see
- that.
- So just in general, like that
- culture of lots of student groups, lots of students who are not even
- affiliated with groups working together on these worker issues on
- other issues, really important, economic justice, social justice
- issues, that's something that we're going to.
- And that being really an effort that is comes out of student
- leadership but is also rooted in responding to the, to the needs
- of, you know, whoever is in that fight.
- That's that's going to be a big thing.
- And something that came out of this.
- Personally, I was very inspired by this.
- And I think this also built for me a lot of really close friendships
- with people that are still very important to me right now.
- It inspired me to go on and actually, I ran for advisory
- neighborhood commission, representing AU campus in the most
- local level of DC government.
- And I'm using that position now to
- Advocate on worker issues, on tenant issues, especially ones
- that affect students and and workers at AU.
- So those are really I think it just for we, you know, this this
- campaign came at a time when at AU we'd right, come, we're just
- coming back in person for the first time in a long time.
- So it was kind of, it set the stage at the moment, which was
- sort of like a fresh start.
- So for this set of AU students
- that's here now, this is has been, our sort of has been a very
- dominant force on campus, and that has been something that I think
- has really grounded students in that that sort of mindset of
- solidarity of action, and I think that's, that's a really powerful
- thing.
- Is there anything else that you'd
- like to talk about that I haven't asked?
- I think that kind of mostly covers it.
- Really I think, yeah, that part of just how this set the stage for so
- much further to come is something that I think is really important
- and also considering that Staff Union, my understanding is a
- short-term contract, relatively short contract.
- So I think in the meantime, there's a lot of great work being
- done in students as well as obviously in the union itself to
- get ready for that next contract fight.
- So I think that's something that I'm really looking forward to of,
- we got staff, a big win, and you know last year, but there's so
- much more that we, everybody needs, that staff needs, that
- students need for staff, from staff and I think the, you know,
- the thing about that short-term contract is this means that a lot
- of students who were there who like myself freshmen for the first
- round are going to probably still be around for a little bit of that
- next fight.
- And that means, I think we're
- going to see a really good, I think transfer of knowledge of
- experience, and energy into that next fight that hopefully fuels
- feels this union's strength for a long time.
- Thank you so much again.
- We really appreciate your
- contribution to the archive.
- It's going to be incredibly
- helpful.
- Thank you.
- We'll be processing this interview in the coming weeks and
- transcribing your recording.
- So we'll share a copy of the
- transcription with you and you're welcome to make any changes at
- that time.
- We're collecting these videos on
- behalf of the AU Staff Union, and that collection will defend be
- turned over to AU archive, where they'll be digitized and made
- publicly accessible for these.
- Your contribution is incredibly
- helpful for this project, so thank you again.
- Thank you.
- We appreciate it.