decision, NYU's decision not to negotiate, the strike, and the administration's response, several GSOC-supportive groups have formed at NYU to call upon president John Sexton to end the strike by negotiating a new contract. More than 200 faculty members – including prominent physicist Alan Sokal, who has written several essays voicing his opinion on the situation – have joined a group called Faculty Democracy. Student support of GSOC has been mixed. Undergraduates supporting GSOC have formed Graduate/Undergraduate Solidarity, and law students have formed Law/Grad Solidarity. The unions of adjunct faculty members, office support staff, security personnel, and other NYU employees have variously supported GSOC. On April 27, 2006, GSOC announced at a membership convention that a public majority of its members continued to support the union and had signed a petition which called on the University Leadership Team to bargain a second contract. After the convention, 43 GSOC members and 14 supporters engaged in an act of civil disobedience and were arrested for blocking traffic. GSOC members resumed their teaching duties on September 5, 2006 (the first day of classes for the 2006–2007 academic year), officially ending their six-month-long strike without receiving a second contract or winning back administrative recognition of the union's collective bargaining rights. The administration had recognized these rights prior to the August 31, 2005 contract expiration. GSOC, through the UAW, funded a failed lawsuit against the developer of a future NYU dorm. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit were community members, but a large portion of the legal fees were provided by the UAW, which was not named on the lawsuit. The suit was dismissed on September 22, 2006. 2013 vote and recognition In 2009, GSOC issued a petition to the NLRB to reverse the Brown decision. The regional labor relations board voted in favor of GSOC-UAW, but the petition stalled at the national level. In 2013, New York University and GSOC-UAW made a joint decision that GSOC would withdraw its petition to the NLRB. In November of that year, the university administration announced that if a majority of the graduate assistant population would vote in favor of GSOC-UAW again representing them in collective bargaining with the university, GSOC-UAW would be recognized in such a role. In December 2013, graduate assistants at NYU voted 620 to 10 in favor of collective bargaining with NYU allied with GSOC-UAW. As a result of this vote, GSOC-UAW again represents graduate