Forming an organization, building a membership, enacting change on campus, CLOG has had an incredible year.  Members have contributed their ideas (at meetings),  voices (at the rally and town meetings) and artistic talents (signs, sandwich boards, and a stunning black coffin) to make our presence known on campus.  CLOG's efforts as the first-ever Brandeis graduates’ activist group were resoundingly approved by students electing all members of the CLOG ticket for officers of  the Graduate Student Association.
Our victories last year include: 

• Prompting the University to partially credit health care for funded grads.
• Creating a forum for grad students to address issues concerning campus life. 
• Bringing union representatives to campus and opening a debate about the benefits of unionizing. 
• E-mail access for grads after they leave Brandeis. 
• Suggesting that kiosks be placed around campus in order to improve campus awareness of activities, rallies, events. At the last town meeting, President Reinharz announced that two very spiffy kiosks will indeed be placed on campus! 

	The UE is a small, liberal, flexible, and progressive union that allows its locals complete autonomy.
	The AAUP is the national professional association for university professors; they have already shown themselves to be committed to Brandeis graduates, and they can provide all sorts of organizational and professional training.

CLOG is the Committee to Lead to Organize the Graduates.  We feel Brandeis ought to offer its graduate workers healthcare and a better wage.  We're organized as a club under the aegis of the Brandeis Graduate Student Association.  Our purpose is to organize Brandeis grads into a union that can successfully negotiate with the administration improvements to our living and working conditions..

Our Goals:

•  In the short term, we'd like to see Brandeis graduates be given membership in a decent health plan.  We also think it reasonable to ask that a minimum salary for all graduates be established.  Ideally this minimum salary would be guaranteed for the graduate's expected tenure at Brandeis, so that he or she could work towards a degree while remaining free from fear of financial or physical destitution. 
• In the long run we think the best way to achieve such goals as these is a union – a vociferous, alert, and conscientious graduate body that is capable of constantly challenging the university to be as great as it ought.  CLOG dreams, that is to say, of one day forging a collective of Brandeis graduate students that takes all the responsibility for itself and some of the responsibility for the school. 

May 5, 2000

This letter is to inform you that a representative group of Brandeis graduate students has voted to co-affiliate with the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America and the American Association of University Professors in order to begin a drive to unionize Brandeis graduate student employees.
   An organized graduate student body will improve community bonds among graduate students, further graduate student professionalism, and facilitate more effective communication between graduate students, faculty, and administration.
   We hold the deepest respect for our university and for the entire Brandeis community and consider this drive to be in accord with Brandeis' deep-rooted traditions of social justice and activism.
  At this unique moment in the history of higher education the spirit of organizing flourishes on campuses nationwide; however, no private university has yet recognized the right of graduate student workers to organize.  We hope Brandeis University will seize the occasion to take a leadership role of national significance and acknowledge the legitimacy of a successful union drive.
   We approach this action in the spirit of the open, honest discourse that must exist in the university, and we look forward to many fruitful discussions about the process and benefits of graduate student unionization.
In the spirit of Louis Brandeis,

The Committee to Lead to Organize the Graduates (CLOG)