Sarah Bodansky, a graduate student in the astronomy department, spends much of her time on the sixth floor of the Lederle Graduate Research Tower (LGRT).
There are four missing ceiling tiles in the conference room on the sixth floor of the Lederle Graduate Research Tower (LGRT) as of March 11. (Grace Chai)
On the way to the lab, Bodansky walks by damaged floor tiles in the bathroom, discolored ceiling tiles and water-stained walls.
A discolored ceiling tile sits near the door of the conference room on the sixth floor of the LGRT as of March 11. (Grace Chai)
Down the hall, in the conference room where classes are held, a hole where four ceiling tiles used to sit looms above the tables. Water streaks on the wall facing the window hints at water damage from the past. A tile right above the door sports shades of brown, black and yellow.
In the department’s cryogenic devices laboratory, holes in the ceiling sit right above lab equipment. Punctuating the normal hum of a lab is a persistent clanging sound, which Bodansky says is normal to hear on the floor.
Concerns about health and safety prompted workers to file their first grievances against the University of Massachusetts Amherst seven months prior for violating provisions of their contract. Graduate student workers came together to discuss their concerns about health and safety in their buildings after several students in the astronomy department voiced worries about recurring issues in their workspaces.
Lab equipment sits under exposed ceiling in the UMass astronomy department’s Cryogenic Devices Laboratory on March 11. The lab is located on the sixth floor of the LGRT. (Grace Chai)
Bodansky named flooding, ceiling tiles collapsing, temperature fluctuations and mold as some issues that workers observed in the astronomy department.
“We … put in maintenance requests and nothing really ends up getting fixed. Things could break the very next day, or it could take months or even years to address issues when we do file requests,” she said.
Graduate students working in the LGRT ended up filing a Step One grievance, which is the first stage in a formal complaint process, through the Graduate Employee Organization (GEO Local 2322/UAW) on Sept. 19, 2025. In their grievance, they stated that graduate student employees in their building were working in hazardous health and safety conditions and called for more effective maintenance of the building.
A tent sits outside of the west wing men’s bathroom in Machmer Hall on March 11. Machmer workers expressed concern about asbestos in their building in a grievance filed on Nov. 18. (Grace Chai)
Shortly after the LGRT group filed its grievance, workers across campus heard about it. On Nov. 18, graduate workers in Machmer Hall also filed a grievance through GEO, referencing many of the same concerns as the LGRT group. Due to the similarities between the two grievances, the two groups’ complaints were combined.
The groups reached out to Dennis Armistead, assistant provost and senior director of Academic Labor Relations and set up a meeting with him on Dec. 10, 2025 to discuss their concerns. They got their official hearing on Jan. 22, 2026, during which they presented testimonies and shared photos of their buildings to the university.
A few weeks later, on Feb. 9, the Deputy Chancellor for Operational and Organizational Strategies, Tilman Wolf, gave the university’s official denial of the grievances.
In an email to GEO, Wolf wrote that there had been productive efforts between the administration and the union on concerns about building conditions and that communication was being improved.
He added that he did not find a violation of the contract and that while the administration cares about the state of campus buildings, these issues are common across college campuses. Wolf said that several of the issues in the grievances had been addressed or were in the process of being addressed by the appropriate departments.
Workers expressed that the problems persisted and that they felt the university had a lack of transparency when it came to communication about building conditions on campus.
Bodansky pointed to a flood that happened after the first hearing on the eleventh floor of the LGRT, which destroyed lab equipment. She added that the service request process was “incredibly convoluted,” stating that there were problems in a lack of communication with facilities coordinators and maintainers.
“When people come to the building, there’s just a huge breakdown in communication in the university where people who come to the building to address the issues and the maintenance requests don’t have enough information about what’s going on either,” Bodansky said.
On March 13, the groups received an email from Armistead saying that the university had received the grievance but was considering the groups’ earlier grievances filed at Step Two due to the grievance being campus wide.
Armistead said that because the Machmer and LGRT concerns covered spaces used by workers in different colleges, there was no one Dean who could assess and evaluate the contract violations in the grievances if needed.
When asked about the grievances, Armistead declined to comment due to the grievances being pending.
Machmer Hall contains six departments in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences as well as some departments from the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. LGRT primarily has departments in the College of Natural Sciences, including chemistry, astronomy, physics, molecular and cellular biology and math.
Graduate student Jamie Northup, who works in the Stratton lab on the eleventh floor of the LGRT, described the physical building as “the hugest source of tension in our work environment,” due to constant environmental issues and loss of supplies to damage. This was especially the case when a pipe burst in the ceiling and damaged many of the lab’s expensive supplies toward the end of January.
A major flood occurred at the end of January 2026 on the eleventh floor of the LGRT, causing major damage to lab equipment.
Photos courtesy of Machmer/LGRT group
Northup, who is from the molecular and cellular biology department, says she was motivated to get involved in the union’s organizing in the winter because of the poor conditions in the LGRT.
“We have a lot of issues with temperature control where it can be too cold in the lab or too hot in the lab. And that’s a big … pain, especially when it’s like too hot because a lot of protein we work with needs to stay on ice and it’s not ideal. There’s a chemical we work with … if it hits 37 degrees Celsius, it explodes,” Northup said.
She pointed out that UMass is an R1 research institution and the research these labs do benefits the school.
“If our labs are getting damaged and we can’t do our work, that also hurts our timelines. We can’t get things out and that also affects funding and grants,” Northup said.
Will Moriarty, a graduate student in the labor studies department, has taught classes in Machmer and says that the environment is unconducive to learning and encouraging students to study subjects like labor studies and anthropology when their classrooms are in poor condition.
“It just makes the state of the department feel pretty bleak,” Moriarty said. “It makes me a lot less … proud of my work and … confident in my work.”
Workers said that they wanted to emphasize that the Environmental Health and Safety team and facilities workers were working hard but lacked resources to deal with the recurring issues in the buildings and prevent them from happening in the future.
“I understand … the school is like, ‘well, we can’t … make a brand-new building,’” Northup said.
Northup and the groups know the University can’t build a new building immediately. However, they hope that the administration can remedy the ongoing issues within the building, such as fixing leaks when they arise instead of “coming in and putting a tarp or a bucket at someone’s desk.”
Northup continued, “It shouldn’t get to the point where there’s a pipe bursting in your lab or someone getting hurt, which that seems to be the only time people spring into action when there’s like serious repercussions that gets everybody frustrated.”
Grace Chai can be reached at [email protected].
