As president of the Oregon State University Coalition of Graduate Employees, I want to correct a statement by PSU Graduate School Dean Eva Pell.

While urging graduate assistants and fixed-term employees to reject unionization efforts, Pell claimed that at Oregon State, "about 3,000 students signed the petition for an election, but only 500 cared enough to vote and a union was formed." Pell failed to do her research properly. Three thousand graduate students attend OSU, but less than a third have assistantships and are eligible for union representation. When our coalition filed for an election, we submitted about 874 petition signatures, not 3,000.

Under our consent election agreement, OSU gave us an excelsior list containing the names of only 702 eligible voters. When the election was held in November 1999, there were 316 votes for our coalition and 166 opposed.

Fully 69 percent of those eligible voted in the election, not the 17 percent suggested by Dean Pell. Clearly, graduate assistants at OSU "cared enough" to strongly support the formation of our coalition.

Our coalition, like GFTEO, is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, which represents more than 14,000 graduate employees nationwide. We have made a big difference for OSU graduate employees. GFTEO can do the same at Penn State.