WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
On Thursday March 11th the Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition will hold a picket line in front of Indiana University Bloomington Provost Lauren Robel’s office building. The provost rejected the coalition’s request for an in-person meeting to discuss the coalition’s calls to end mandatory fees poverty level wages.
The picket line comes on the heels of an exchange of heated letters between the graduate worker’s coalition and the provost’s office, in which the coalition decried the university’s compensation packages as below a living wage, and described the mandatory and international student fees as a pay to work scheme, where graduate students have to pay their employer in order to teach. One member of the coalition put it this way:
“Graduate instructors teach college level classes but live in poverty. Our teaching and our education suffer because we are working extra jobs and scraping by.”
The provost’s office responded to the letter by rejecting all of the coalition’s claims, and by stating that the concept of a living wage could not be applied to part-time graduate workers.
Cole Nelson, and active member of the Coalition, told WFHB that graduate students with SAA’s, or student academic appointments, regularly work more that 20 hours per week.
“I’m sure just about every graduate student who has an SAA will firmly disagree with with Lauren Robel.”
In response, the graduate workers published another letter which noted that they have to pay mandatory university fees out of their stipends. The coalition noted that waived tuition scholarships are not income, and cannot be used to pay bills, for example.
The coalition contrasted their wages by noting that Provost Lauren Robel received a three hundred thousand dollar compensation increase in the year 2020 alone, bringing above $888,000.
