The University of California, Santa Cruz has fired 54 teaching assistants for “abandonment of job responsibilities” after they refused to hand over final grades for undergraduate students. The graduate students have been on strike throughout February for higher pay—the protests reportedly included refusals to teach and hold office hours. “It is extremely disappointing to us that we have to take such a drastic step, but we ultimately cannot retain graduate students as teaching assistants who will not fulfill their responsibilities,” said Lori G. Kletzer, the school’s executive vice chancellor, in a statement on Friday to the student and faculty body. Roughly 200 teaching assistants in December 2019 withheld student grades, demanding a $1,412 wage increase that would help with expensive housing costs in the area. The university’s graduate student union does not support the strike, according to the university. The union, however, said in a statement that it was “shocked by UC's callousness, and by the violence that so many protesters experienced as they peacefully made the case for a cost of living increase.”