The decision, released on July 13, overturns the 2000 precedent set in an New York University case that granted graduate students at private universities worker status, giving them the right to form unions and use collective bargaining for their contracts.

Yet the landmark decision will not affect Columbia's case directly, officials said. The NLRB's New York regional board will rule on the status of Columbia University graduate students.

"We're still in limbo," said Susan Brown, assistant vice president of public affairs.

There is no set date for that decision's release.

"We haven't decided what to do yet," Elbert Tellem, the Assistant Regional Director of the New York Board, said.

The 3-2 verdict in the Brown case followed partisan lines: George W. Bush's three Republican appointees overturned the NYU ruling, while chairs selected during Bill Clinton's tenure upheld the precedent. In their majority opinion, Chairman Robert Battista, Peter Schaumber and Ronald Meisburg wrote, "It is clear to us that graduate student assistants . . . are primarily students and have a primarily education, not economic, relationship with their university."

Despite the national decision in the Brown case and regardless of the regional board decision, representatives from Columbia's Graduate Student Employees Unite group said they will continue to fight for a union.

"[A ruling won't] change our position and it [won't] change our goal . . . to organize and continue to fight to form our union," GSEU member and sixth year philosophy graduate student David Wolach said.

GSEU members said they hope that the Columbia administration will recognize a union no matter what the decision from the New York board is. The group has not ruled out resuming last spring's strike to pressure the University, members said.

"There's nothing stopping Lee Bollinger and the Columbia administration from recognizing our union with or without the labor board. We're going to continue to organize for a union and try to pressure the University until they recognize us," Wolach said.

Last spring, GSEU went on strike for union recognition. The strike caused the cancellation of numerous discussion sections, Literature Humanities, Contemporary Civilization, and University Writing classes and altered the schedule of countless finals.

During the strike, Columbia administrators continued to wait for the NLRB's ruling on its March 2002 appeal to the board's February 2002 ruling that gave employee status Columbia graduate students and a small group of undergraduates working as teaching and research assistants. The administration tried to minimize disruption by ensuring that all seniors obtained their grades before graduation and underclassmen received credit for their classes.

Sophomores were especially frustrated with the Core office's policy toward CC. Professors David Armitage and Jim Zetzel, the current and former heads of CC, taught large lectures to make up sections lost to the strike, and the Core office wrote a universal final for students with absent precepts.

Administrators refused requests for incompletes from sophomores who were upset with the common final. Objecting students placed stickers on their exam books saying "[this final] compromises the academic integrity of my Contemporary Civilization experience."

The strike went on hiatus before commencement at the request of City Council speaker Gifford Miller and State Senate Minority Leader David Paterson. The politicians also had written to President Bollinger about an amiable end to the strike.

GSEU representatives spoke with Provost Alan Brinkley in June for the first time since the strike began but has not met with the administration since, they said.