SANTA CRUZ — Saying they cannot afford the cost of living in Santa Cruz, a number of UC Santa Cruz graduate students are engaging in an unauthorized strike — and plan to withhold students’ grades until given a raise.

A group of graduate students announced Sunday they are demanding a $1,412 monthly raise. The raise would serve as a cost-of-living adjustment that accounts for the higher cost of housing in the Santa Cruz rental market compared to their peers at UC Riverside, according to the students.

The strike coincides with the end of UCSC’s fall quarter, with students’ grades due Dec. 18.

Until they receive the raise, the graduate students say they won’t submit those grades as part of their teaching assistant duties. Research assistants participating in the strike were planning to refuse additional work.

“We’re not playing defense anymore with these administrations,” said history graduate student Carlos Humberto Cruz, one of the striking students. “We are engaging in direct action, and if they choose to ignore us it’s going to come to a point where that’s just going to be impossible.”

In the lead-up to the strike, campus union leaders presented a letter to UCSC Chancellor Cynthia Larive demanding the $1,412 raise Nov. 7.

In a statement, UCSC spokesman Scott Hernandez-Jason said the campus administration is aware of the “severe housing challenges” graduate students face and has been working on potential solutions after receiving the letter.

“We take their needs seriously and are committed to working together to address the challenges of high rent burdens,” Hernandez-Jason said. “Graduate students are integral to the mission of the university.”

But the UCSC administration is disappointed by the students’ decision to strike in violation of the union’s contract, he added. “The way to come to a solution is to address this by having open discussions—not through an illegal strike.”

More than 100 students and supporters rallied at the McHenry library Monday, where speakers aired a list of grievances against the campus and systemwide administrations.

“Today we stand against the abuse of the University of California, and against the systemic hyper-exploitation of U.S. Academia. We are done,” Zia Puig, a feminist-studies doctoral student, told ralliers.

Puig, who is disabled and uses a wheelchair, described health complications and an inadequate diet she said she routinely endures at the end of every quarter due to her workload as a teaching assistant. She said she plans to live in the McHenry library as a demonstration of those conditions until the students’ demands are met.

According to a press release announcing the strike, graduate students at UCSC report routinely paying 50-60% of their income on housing. Students who spoke at the Monday rally shared stories of eating a single meal a day to keep their costs down.

Others shared accounts of living in shared rooms, garages, cars and undergoing periods of homelessness as part of navigating housing in Santa Cruz, one of the nation’s most expensive markets for renters.

Much about how the strike will take shape remains unclear, such as how it could impact undergraduate students’ grades, how many graduate student workers may participate, and what kind of repercussions striking students could face.

As a “wildcat” strike, the action was not authorized by the UAW 2865 union representing student workers across the UC system.

Any striking action undertaken without authorization would violate the union’s contract, and could lead to consequences up to and including dismissal from the graduate students’ work-study roles.

Humberto Cruz, for one, said he is ready to face whatever consequences may come.

“We are in a privileged position where we’re at a university,” he said, calling whatever consequences he could face “minor scale” in relative terms.

Campus union leaders — almost all of whom resigned last week in an effort to minimize legal repercussions — said they expect participation from hundreds of graduate students based on the results of a straw poll and a Sunday strike meeting.

Jack Davies is a doctoral student in UCSC’s history of consciousness program, and among the five head stewards of the UCSC chapter of UAW 2865 who resigned Thursday to clear the way for the strike to move forward.

“We also hope that more people will jump on now that it’s been announced,” said Davies, who himself plans to withhold grades.

It’s also unclear how the strike may impact undergraduate students who are shortly expecting their letter grades. Hernandez-Jason, the campus spokesman, said the administration is looking into how to mitigate those impacts.

The contract setting graduate students wages is negotiated between the UC system and the UAW 2865 union, not at the campus level.

UAW 2865 had not responded to a request for comment by press time.

However, in a post from the union’s Facebook account Monday, it said it “supports all efforts to improve working and living conditions for graduate and undergraduate student-workers at the University, though, consistent with the contract, UAW 2865 is not organizing this action.”