Dear Chancellor Larive, Campus Provost/EVC Kletzer, and President Napolitano,
Throughout this campaign, graduate students have given testimony of their experiences trying to survive in Santa Cruz on the inadequate wages and funding we receive from this institution.
We want to give voice to these anonymous accounts to illustrate to administration and faculty how dire our situation really is. We also hope that by sharing these unedited stories, graduate students will realize that they are not alone in these experiences:
“I am proudly among the 4th generation of women in my family to attend college, but the first of any gender to enroll in a doctoral program of any kind. In order to pay for my education thus far, I took on the burden of student loans during my undergraduate and graduate school careers. Paying back these loans has been a slow, challenging process, especially now that I face the cost of my doctoral studies entirely on my own. Even after graduating from the UCSC and possibly obtaining employment (gainful employment after graduation is not guaranteed), these loans will still be difficult to repay. At this time, I am entirely dependent upon employment by the UCSC to survive in Santa Cruz.
Thanks to my department, the tuition costs to remain in the doctoral program are covered. My GSI-ship and TA-ships also help to cover living costs, however, over 70% of my income from these positions go directly towards monthly rent payments, leaving very little to cover other personal expenses. While enrolled in this doctoral program, I sincerely want to avoid taking on any additional loans.
Therefore, in addition to the department funding and work I perform for my department, I am also employed by some community colleges, teaching two courses online. I thoroughly enjoy teaching but the adjunct salary from the position affords me barely enough to pay utility bills and costs incurred commuting to/from UCSC’s campus. Two other part-time positions, as an online tutor, for about five hours per week, and as a customer service agent, for eight to sixteen hours per week, supplement my income slightly, though both pay just over minimum wage. The compensation from these two positions affords me enough to cover any remaining living costs not covered by the adjunct positions and the work at UCSC. These positions also allow me to avoid taking on additional student loans but deeply infringe upon the time I can commit to actual study, which is my true purpose for enrolling at the UCSC.
My predicament and the predicament of most American students, including those at the UCSC, speaks to a much larger, systemic problem in this country caused by the commodification of education and while I do not see a clear path to repairing the problem, particularly given the disturbing, current political climate, granting graduate students of the UCSC COLA would be a step in the direction of improvement.”
These stories aren’t novel or surprising to most of us. And they shouldn’t be surprising to administration, who have completed multiple assessments of graduate student wellbeing. Administrators have ignored and dismissed their own findings, which demonstrate that it is impossible to survive on our stipends in Santa Cruz. We will not be ignored. We will not be dismissed. We will not wait. We will not submit.