Dear Temple community, 

The ongoing strike by the Temple University Graduate Students’ Association (TUGSA) is challenging to all of us and deeply affects our campus. Please be assured that the university remains steadfastly focused on bringing it to a swift and fair resolution.  

Our commitment is to provide our graduate student employees with fair compensation and benefits that are competitive with the market, support their continuing education and enable them to pursue their future careers. We also need to ensure that Temple remains economically sound and able to provide an excellent education to our students. 

We value the talented students whom we have admitted into our graduate programs. We believe in them and their talents, and we recognize the key role that they play in helping our university operate. For a year now, we have been negotiating in good faith, and we look forward to meeting the union representatives today. We sincerely hope that we can come to terms soon and that all members of TUGSA will have the opportunity to vote on these terms. 

We are committed to communicating with our university community about the negotiations, including the contract proposal and other information. We encourage you to visit temple.edu/tugsa-strike, where we will share this information. 

Negotiations can be difficult, but the process can be a source of new understanding and solutions. We believe we will find a fair solution based on our shared values of innovation, perseverance and hard work. 

Sincerely, 

Gregory N. Mandel 
Provost and Laura H. Carnell Professor of Law

Ken Kaiser 
Chief Operating Officer