New York University's decision this week to appeal a landmark ruling in favor of graduate student unionization means the National Labor Relations Board will soon set a country-wide standard for whether graduate students at private universities can collectively bargain.

The regional ruling, written by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board in New York, held that teaching assistants are entitled to the same collective bargaining rights as other university employees.

At Yale, where graduate students have for years been angling to unionize, even resorting to strikes, teaching assistants are ecstatic and the university is nervous.

But at Harvard, there has been little reaction--not even a hint of happiness from graduate students or a pinch of perturbation from administrators.

Harvard officials and prominent graduate student council leaders agree that Harvard teaching fellows won't unionize anytime soon.

And the reason is simple: TFs here get paid more, get better benefits, get more say in their teaching assignments and are better trained than their counterparts at other schools.

That's not the University speaking--it's grad students themselves.

"Most TFs that I have talked to do not feel that there is a need for us to unionize," says Ian A. Richmond, president of Harvard's Graduate Student Council (GSC). "Graduate students in [the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences] feel much more strongly about issues than about employment issues."