As a cash-strapped undergraduate plugging through the last semester of my degree, I feel for the students of York University. Not only did they get cheated out of the education they paid for this year, but it looks as though they’ll have to forfeit the right to secure summer employment and internships in order to compensate for their stolen semester. Students can expect their spring graduation plans to be put on hold.

The CUPE 3903 strike is entering its 12th week. While there have been talks about legislating an end to this ongoing saga within the coming week, the damage—to student psyches, to York’s public image, and to the union’s credibility—has already been done.

At this point, we’ve mostly forgotten the union’s reasons for striking, which amount to higher wages for TAs and longer contracts for sessional professors. Improving working conditions are reasonable grounds for action, but enough is enough, and even these reasonable factors don’t seem relevant anymore. What began as a strike to improve labour conditions has devolved into a war of attrition, an endless conflict sustained by pride. At the end of the day—or months, more like—the undergraduates are the ones who suffer, abandoned by the teachers and administrators who were trusted with their educational advancement.

I don’t mean to dismiss CUPE’s cause. Being a graduate student is undeniably a highly demanding full-time job, especially with the addition of teaching responsibilities. Yes, many graduate students also have families to support, and, yes, it would be ideal for universities to provide their graduate teaching staffs with, at the very least, a living wage. It’s also true that year-long contracts for lecturers are doubly disadvantageous, both in terms of practicality and diminished job security. But surely there must be a way to work this out without having to burden 50,000 students in the process.

Who will emerge the winner in this situation? Not York University, whose enrollment has dropped considerably. It won’t be CUPE 3903, either: though they will likely receive marginal upgrades through some process of forced arbitration, fewer students mean fewer teaching positions. And it will most definitely not be York’s undergraduates, although it appears they were never really considered in the first place.

At the very least, the end is near. On Tuesday, Premier Dalton McGuinty announced that he intends to resume legislation to end the union’s strike, marking the first government-mandated strike cessation in the history of Canada’s university sector. A beacon of hope for beleaguered students, perhaps, but the return to class will probably not restore faith in the integrity of York University’s administration, or the union’s professed commitment to the provision of higher education.