The UW is offering the bulk of it's classified staff currently in contract negotiations no cost of living or pay increase at all. It's pretty insane given the current inflation and economy. These are the people that work directly with and for students and pretty much run the university, but the people that make 200K+ in Administration don't think they deserve wages that even keep up with inflation.

It's the same thing we see playing out on a national scale with the rich elite few garnering all the money and resources while the rest of the working class suffers through price increases, inflation, and struggling to survive. Alot of these people in today's protest make less than 50K a year, well below the Seattle median income and barely above Seattle's minimum wage. It's not just sad that the UW won't offer them a living wage, it's mean and heartless.

I hope if you see the medical staff, library staff, and administrative staff protesting during the current negotiations, you will honk or raise a fist in support. These are the bulk of the staff you will interact with during your time at the UW beyond the faculty and they are here to support and help you. They deserve to be paid fairly!

They would answer to the names Carlos or Kiara. None of our friends can find them. Please please please tell me if you have seen my friend I am so scared for them. I wasn’t sure what flair to use so I posted under news, mods if I need to repost with different flair please let me know.

Edit: for those who don't know, my friend was found dead yesterday in front of Kane Hall. They were a beautiful, kind, and incredibly gentle person who I was lucky to know for 12 years. They had a quirky sense of humor, a deeply philosophical outlook on life, and loved JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. They were always there for anyone who needed them and every moment spent with them was brighter for it. They will be missed so very much. Please take care of your friends. If any of you are struggling, please talk to someone. Talk to anyone in your life you feel safe with and if you don't have anyone, you can call suicide hotlines or you can even DM me. Just please don't do this to yourself. Please. I know this life can be hard but you are all so worth it.

Someone set up a small memorial site on one of the benches in Red Square. If anyone wants to leave flowers or personal notes or anything else it would mean a lot. Even if you didn't know Kiara, I know they would be moved, to feel seen and to know that so many people cared.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/u-district-event-canceled-after-questionable-business-opposition/

There was going to be a block party today on the Ave, with traffic closed to cars for one block so that people could enjoy the full thoroughfare while supporting their favorite local businesses. It got canceled because business owners organized car-brained pushback.

I’ve almost been hit twice by crazy drivers on the Ave and would have loved just once to not have to dodge drivers when I’m literally in a crosswalk.

My friends and I would also go to [redacted because someone in the comments is threatening me with legal action] pretty regularly. From now on, we’re going elsewhere. If you have contempt for pedestrians and transit riders (or somehow think most of your business is because of, not in spite of, drivers), then you don’t get our money.

Here’s the website about the event we’re now missing out on this weekend: https://theaveforall.udistrict.org

Started happening today, don’t know how many affected - spreading awareness ??

For those unaware, this sub has been functionally abandoned for years. The previous top mod did no moderation whatsoever, but refused to hand the sub over to new people. This included doing some nonsense behind the scenes to block anyone from requesting the sub on r/redditrequest.

But there's good news! After literal months of failed Reddit requests, we finally managed to get the old mods removed! We're super excited to grow the community and make this sub a better place for everyone. We're starting off with a few changes that shouldn't affect most people, but will increase the quality of posts and the overal feed.

1. We have a new housing megathread! For those looking for sublets, roommates, etc, we ask you utilize that thread from now on.
2. Low effort posts have been banned. This includes posts that can be answered with the search bar/Google, "chance me" posts, and other low quality submissions. This will be up to mod discretion, but we will err on the side of letting it stay if it's not obviously egregious.
3. A few more rules were added, you can check them out.

If anyone has any suggestions, ideas, or concerns, please don't hesistate to leave them below or send us a modmail. We are very approachable and want feedback. This is the community's subreddit, we're just here to make sure it doesn't go to shit.

Yesterday around midday I saw some people by the steps near Odegaard. Saw someone with an anti trans sign and someone with a maga hat.

Today I walked by the same area and looks like there’s eggs shells on the ground. Did they get egged?

From 'The Daily':

A 21-year-old man was stabbed the morning of June 1 in the 5000 block of Brooklyn Avenue Northeast while attempting to enter his parked vehicle. The man sustained serious, non-fatal injuries, and police believe him to be a UW student.

University community members did not receive a UW Alert at the time of the incident or communication regarding the violent assault throughout the day. The UW Alert blog has not been updated at the time of publication. The incident occurred less than a mile from campus.

The 40-year-old male suspect and victim did not know one another, according to SPD Detective Eric Muñoz.

“This was an unprovoked, violent assault,” Muñoz wrote.

According to the incident report shared with The Daily, the suspect asked the 21-year-old man a question before approaching him and stabbing him several times. The weapon was described by the 21-year-old man as a box cutter.

The 21-year-old man separated himself from the attacker before calling 911, just before 8 a.m.

https://www.dailyuw.com/article/man-stabbed-morning-of-june-1-on-brooklyn-avenue-northeast-police-believe-victim-to-be-a-uw-student-20260602

Members of SEIU 925 voted 83.3% to reject the University of Washington’s “last, best and final” contract offer for classified employees, and the university now said it will file for mediation.

The vote, which leaves almost 7,000 classified staff without a new contract, puts the union and the university at odds over wages, paid time off and AI protections. The union says the offer included no wage increases, no wage reopeners over the two-year term, no additional paid time off and no AI protections.

The university says state law could delay any raises until 2028.

"UW needs to get back to the bargaining table ASAP with real solutions," Dale Siewert, a medical laboratory scientist and SEIU 925 chapter president, said.

“Frankly, people are tired of being undervalued and underappreciated,” Siewert said. “UW is clearly making a conscious decision not to invest in its workers." 

KC Metro plans to cancel the only single route 372 between the UW Seattle and Bothell campuses ending it after August 28th.

The route has provided safe and convenient transportation for students, staff, faculty and medical professionals for decades in a near door to door campus operation around the North end of Lake Washington.

It is planned to be replaced with a transfer route via light rail or new route 72 connected to ST 522, that will not be it's equal in multiple ways for long commuters of 372. This cancellation adds to travel time, increases exposure to safety issues during transfer, and increases dependency on a central rail line known for disruption or added travel to the new 72 route. Older riders, those with disabilities, and safety concerns will be most affected. Students enrolled at both campuses will lose their direct connection between at the start of the academic year for courses and travel time already planned.

If you are a 372 rider, please send your comments to KC Metro Other Topics, and UW Transportation Services (ucommute@uw.edu) which pays heavily for Metro routes through U-Pass via student fees and staff benefits.

16 months after IEB protest, all charges set to drop for UW33 - The Daily

UW just held a webinar on their new general purpose AI tool "Purple" yesterday 6/18/26. I attended it and will try and give as much information as I remember, and link all the sources associated with it below. Not sponsored, or affiliated in anyway. Just a concerned Alumni, who wishes the best for the current students, faculty, and others in the UW community. Being a husky has led to many of the best experiences in my life, met my wife, and made life-long friends through my time there. This info might not be for a lot of general AI users who already have access to Cowork, Codex, or any of the other frontier models, but my main goal is that this finds those who are unable to afford $20 a month or more for these pro models, or for those worried about their data being used for training on the publicly available models.

What is it, what is it not?

It functions like a ChatGPT accessed via UW NetID, with your data kept inside UW's data ecosystem instead of public AI providers. It is Delivered through Cloudforce's nebulaOne platform inside of UW's own Microsoft Azure cloud service. It is not a ground-up model UW built in-house and primarily uses ChatGPT 5 and some Gemini Models (I kind of zoned out on that part). They also did hit at Anthropic compatibility, but did not specify directly if it uses Opus, Sonnet, or Haiku.

Goal:

Has been stated in past articles and press released, their intention in launching this tool is to give students, faculty, and staff, equitable, free access to robust generative AI. Bridging the gap between users who can afford the premium models and the free tier while keeping their data secure.

What types of content can Purple generate?

Purple can help you generate a wide range of content, including:

• Writing & Communication: Emails, documents, reports, quizzes, debates, and more.
• Creative & Ideation: Brainstorming, storytelling, exploring approaches to planning and strategy.
• Technical & Coding: Code generation, debugging, database design, workflow automation.
• Data & Analysis: Data interpretation, budget planning, research assistance.
• Learning & Support: Tutoring aides, and academic writing support.

The coolest feature they presented:
Making Agents shareable. It's not super novel, OpenAI does this with their EDU partnerships and extensions. You can already make your own and share them on OpenAI's marketplace. Most of these applications have been developed by faculty to downstream to students. I have not seen any use cases for students to publish these tools for each other. I see this as a powerful tool to enable classroom cohesion and strengthen the ability for adoption and onboarding amongst students and the administrative machines. Here are some use cases where I see this being applied:

Use Cases for Student-to-Student Agent Sharing:

1. An upperclassman creates an Agent trained on a syllabus, past problem sets, or a professor's specific way of explaining concepts for underclassmen. The Greek system already have test vaults they aggregate over years to track how questions change from quarter to quarter to ensure their pledges and members the best foot forward in their courses.
2. An Agent that can find the best double-major, or major-minor synchronicity: explaining stats concepts through bio examples for a bio major, or CS recursion through music theory for a music-tech double major.
3. Degree-planning specific agents that know the unwritten rules like prereq traps, which professors and classes to seek or avoid, optimal quarter sequencing for desired major (or, honestly, the type of experience you want to have in that quarter).
4. Grad students can utilize this for onboarding in their lab or research department for incoming undergrads. Standard of Procedure, equipment protocols, safety, etc.
5. Agents that track professor inquiries for undergrad researchers and what they would want in an outreach email.
6. Interview prep agents built by current students that are interning are companies and have gone through that process.
7. Great for community and club infrastructure/logistics. (I worked at The Daily as a student photographer my whole time at UW, this would have been really cool to have used to get to know what each department does, bake in traditions and norms, as well as a bunch of other historical context that new members would not have.
8. An agent that holds all the hidden gems and perks of being a UW student. Now that I think about it, I just might make this myself! But anyway, there are a lot of benefits that come with your husky card that you might not be aware of. Discounts to museums, exhibitions, and experiences on or off campus. A directory of campus events you'd be interested in targeting a specific topic. Something like an agent that can provide all the scheduled job fairs, which food hall has the best pizza, which on campus cafe plays the best music. I'd most likely use this to scan every event that would offer students free stuff.
9. Grant specific agents that can help you tailor your writing to become eligible for research funds and projects specified to your department.

Is this currently live?

Not yet, but from what I gathered from the webinar it is going to be live sooner than later. If they're hosting webinars for it to introduce and train students, staff, and faculty, I would assume that it is in it's final stages for launch. I'd expect it to be live by the start of Fall Quarter and it being introduced in your classes. For freshmen, I would even imagine it is plugged in to the onboarding you get with your orientation, FIGs, or your introductory courses.

Does this matter?

To some, it might. To most, probably not. But I believe this will open an avenue of discussion and productivity for Student and Faculty alike. The question no longer will be "did you use AI for this." At this point, it might already be assumed some sort of AI was used in the process of either writing or researching any given topic. This moves the discussion for student and faculty usage to, did you use it well? At least that's what I hope.

You can dig in to all its other capabilities, extensions, and use-cases here:

Purple Quick Start Guide:
https://uwconnect.uw.edu/it?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0036001

Purple Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):
https://uwconnect.uw.edu/it?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0035982

More Documentation on Purple:
https://uwconnect.uw.edu/it?id=kb_category&kb_id=11336c101becd214ddb254ea234bcb92&kb_category=327d44e7c303261026a0300f0501311f

I discovered this in the newsletter UW Today:
https://explore.uw.edu/index.php/email/emailWebview?email=MTMxLUFRTy0yMjUAAAGigei5peCQZv0ju0Ae4oUAg1GXfn8ODtFZ0vK3weFdUXm9K3lepJ1DVWujeytUARp__yNyJlJTXADuTOp_n9V6OkzvwJIKEanl23I

where in the "Events" tab, there was a webinar "Training in UW's gen AI Tool Purple" was taking place, and got curious of what it had to offer. It looks like these are held once a month now for those interesting in taking a look:
https://www.washington.edu/calendar/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D188106303

I genuinely hope you all can benefit from this hellhole of a transition into this new AI era. From Covid, the deterioration of civil public discourse, the ever climbing costs of education, and the uncertainty the future job market holds, I really do hope people can take some benefit from this monumental change that is being shoved down everyone's throat. For better or for worse, AI is here and there's not really any putting that Genie back in the bottle. I was a husky promise student, so I depended a lot on Pell grants and other resources to financially get me through my degree. I know not everyone is well off in the UW community and this may be a way for those in similar situations to share and access these tools that I'm sure others are most definitely using. Take care and prosper.

TLDR:

UW is rolling out "Purple," a free, university-licensed AI chat tool for students, faculty, and staff — announced via a webinar the I attended on 6/18/26.

Key points:

• Accessed via UW NetID; runs on Cloudforce's nebulaOne platform inside UW's own Azure cloud, so data stays in UW's ecosystem rather than going to public AI providers
• Not a custom UW-built model — it's primarily backed by GPT-5 and some Gemini models, with vague mention of Anthropic compatibility (no word on which Claude tier)
• Goal: close the access gap for students/staff who can't afford $20+/month AI subscriptions, while keeping data private
• Handles the usual range: writing, coding, data analysis, research, tutoring support, etc.
• Standout feature: shareable custom Agents — similar to OpenAI's GPT marketplace, but the poster sees untapped potential in student-to-student sharing (syllabus-trained tutoring agents, degree-planning agents, lab onboarding agents, interview-prep agents, club/community agents, "hidden perks of being a Husky" agents, etc.)
• Webinars on Purple are apparently held monthly for anyone interested