On Tuesday, Nov. 12, graduate students gathered in the Brickyard to rally against high costs of student fees, and called for NC State to get rid of student fees paid by graduate student workers.
Members chanted “UNC abolished fees, why can’t we?” and “No more fees!” as the rally began.
Several people spoke at the rally, including Grace Ullman, a second-year Ph. D student in plant and microbial biology. She said the work that numerous graduate students do is essential to the university’s functionality.
“The graduate students at State number over 10,000, and without us, the university would not function,” Ullman said. “We teach hundreds of classes and lab sections every week, publish research in a huge variety of journals, to which State retains the right to, and we do all this for dismal pay.”
Ullman said that graduate students are stretched thin, and often have very little time between all their commitments.
“Every week, graduate students are balancing teaching, grading, personal research responsibilities, their own homework assignments, all the while struggling to tidy their homes, cook every night, maintain social relationships, and find a few hours out of all of that to sleep,” Ullman said. “All these responsibilities and commitments leave us exhausted, depressed, anxious, and often defeated.”
Furthermore, Ullman argued that graduate students should come together to demand a living wage.
“Despite being over 10,000 individuals, we are just that—individuals—but we don’t have to remain atomized,” Ullman said. “When we combine our energy and our minds, we are much more powerful than the administration. When we are organized, we are strong thousands over their disempowered few. Our collective power is great enough to demand what we deserve: a living wage, a basic human right. One way that we can increase our income is to abolish graduate student fees.”
Miranda Elston, a sixth-year graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill, spoke about the recent, successful push by graduate students at the university.
“For the fees to be abolished for us in the way they have, it was a big win,” Elston said. “I will say, it was a long process. This did not just happen over one year, there was a lot of work put in. There were many organizations that all worked together and separately in order to put pressure … Many times, we were told we could not do this. There was no place to find the money, there was no ability to do this. At the end of the day, when these different pressures were added and these different groups came together, they did get rid of the fee for graduate students. It is possible.”
Elston also shared a personal anecdote, emphasizing the difficulties posed by the low stipend in paying for medical bills.
“I was diagnosed with a pituitary tumor,” Elston said. “To get an MRI was close to 3,000 dollars for me, which I could not afford on my stipend, which was less than $17,000 a year. I had to wait until these fees were abolished in order to see whether or not I needed surgery. I do not, but this is the kind of situation we are being put into. Our healthcare is being put at risk, our mental health is being put at risk.”
Mike Madden, a Ph.D candidate in marine, earth and atmospheric sciences, spoke next at the event about his drive to fight for graduate students.
“My advocacy on this issue is driven is driven somewhat by my experiences with fees,” Madden said. “I’ve struggled to keep up with student loan interest, credit card debt, I haven’t visited a dentist in a couple of years, put aside medical treatment. My decisions to participate both in policy and advocacy are driven by my love for my family, my friends and NC State.”
Madden spoke about the fee review process, detailing how fee recommendations come from campus partners to Student Senate, then onto review committees, the chancellor, NC State’s Board of Trustees and finally the UNC Board of Governors. He said students should take action at all levels, contacting representatives, whether it be in Student Government or in the North Carolina General Assembly.
“Who represents you in that matter?” Madden said. “You may receive emails about student senate elections, people running for student senate, people running for student body president. You may go to the ballot box, and see people that are running for state senator, people who are running for state representative. You may recognize the names, or what they stand for, but I tell you folks, those elections really, really do matter. It’s worth digging in, to see what those people are actually standing for.
Some speakers said there were plans on attending the next NC State Board of Trustees and speaking out against the student fees.
Dante Strobino, field organizer for UE Local 150 and former graduate worker at NC State, spoke in favor of organizing to demand change.
“Last year, on the ebb of potentially calling a strike of teaching assistants, [graduate workers] forced [UNC-CH] not only to abolish student fees, but also not to spend millions of dollars to build a shrine to white supremacy and re-erect Silent Sam, and to hire more police to repress student activism,” Strobino said. “We stopped that. Worker action, and solidarity with student action united.”
Strobino also spoke about the increasing frequency of graduate students teaching undergraduate student classes, and stressed how essential graduate workers are to the university.
Georgy Scholten, a fourth-year graduate student in mathematics, spoke to the crowd about his recent experience teaching an undergraduate class and struggling to get by.
“Today, I am teaching a Calc I class, with about 90 students, and I have one TA, who is struggling to finish grading every test on time, who can barely provide any feedback to the students,” Scholten said. “We are just taken advantage of, and we have to do more every year, more work, teach more classes, teach more hours, spend more time tutoring students, and we’re being paid less because of the student fee increase.”
Emily Floess, a Ph. D student in civil engineering, said that NC State’s current efforts to help graduate students are not enough, if the university wants to be recognized as one of the best institutions.
“I came from the University of Illinois, which had a very strong and old union,” Floess said. “There, we had minimal student fees, full dental, vision, and good healthcare. NC State wants to be a top university, but if they treat their graduate students that work the way they treat them now, they’re not going to get top students, and it’s not going to be a top university.”
