Dear Chancellor Larive,
Graduate students demanded:
- a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA), which would bring all graduate students out of rent burden, for all graduate students, regardless of residence, visa, documentation, employment or funding status,
- a guarantee of non-retaliation for anyone engaged in any strike activities,
- that the COLA does not come from an increase in undergraduate tuition.
However, the programs offered in this email:
- Offer only a $2500 a year increase – for graduate students currently paying 50% of their monthly wages towards rent, this will decrease their rent burden for the nine months they are enrolled by only 5%, or to 45% rent burden.
- Suggest the housing supplements will be “needs-based”, when graduate students have communicated that all of our graduate students are in immediate need.
- Only cover doctoral and MFA students, when our communications have always included Masters students.
- Do not clearly include support for international and undocumented students, who are not eligible for FAFSA.
- Guarantee five years of funding for PhDs, and two years for MFAs, which, although welcome, is the bare minimum for a university that touts itself as a progressive research leader. This guaranteed funding does not get us out of rent burden.
- Do not meet our demand for non-retaliation, as the announcement is given in the context of additional threats of written disciplinary warnings and student conduct summons (which students have received today).
- Have a sunset provision, existing only “until additional campus graduate student housing is available.”
Therefore, I see no reason for graduate students to stop striking; rather, they should be incensed by the wholly inadequate offer, given the threat of disciplinary action through the Code of Conduct (which the undergraduate representative for the Campus Conduct Board has responded to here, and the president of the statewide UAW 2865 has responded to in the email attached below).
Yours,
Tony Boardman