My Letter to the University of Iowa Board of Regents

Recently the grad student Union here at Iowa made its offers to the Board of Regents--it included such standard fare as 4.5% raise and better health insurance, as well as much more overdue demands like eliminating grad fees once and for all.  Then, at a meeting on Monday that was well attended by the Union, a rep for the Board of Regents offered their counter proposals, which included eliminating full-tuition reimbursements for quarter-time grad students, no salary increase, and not even addressing the fees.  The Union wanted better, the Board offered worse.  Needless to say, this did not sit well with the Union.

Now, I recognize that the point of the meeting wasn't to begin negotiations--the Union high-balled (for example, the Union also asked for health insurance to cover sex-change operations, which they have to know won't happen anytime in the near future), and the Board low-balled, and hopefully the two will negotiate and compromise between the two offers before March (which is when arbitration would have to begin).  Nevertheless, some of my fellow classmates, rather than waiting on the Union arbitrators or on the humanity of the Board of Regents, decided to be proactive and send letters directly to the Board members themselves.  I decided to join them, and below is what I wrote.   We haven't gotten any responses (yet), but I like the idea that they start feeling points of pressure from multiple sources, to let them know that the grad students aren't just passive participants in these proceedings, that we really do mean business (and with the University of Oregon grad students following through on their threat to strike, Iowa better realize that we're no slacktivists, either).

My classmate who inspired me to write the Board focused on the tight financial straights of being an English grad student, appealing to their humanity; while I liked her letter, I decided to take a different approach, so that, you know, they get hammered by a variety of different arguments to appeal to different personalities.  As such, my letter focuses more on the diminished returns of having overworked, underpaid grad students teaching the only required Rhetoric course to our undergrads:

Dear Board of Regents

My name is Jacob Bender, an English PhD student here at the University of Iowa, and a Rhetoric 1030 instructor. I am writing you about the proposed new graduate student contract. I do appreciate your predicament: budgets are tight, we're not out of the recession yet, you must juggle many competing interests, and the recent shenanigans at UNI have helped no one. But supporting our grad
students is integral to the mission of the university.

Here at U. Iowa, the undergraduates sit on the knife's edge, since (unlike most colleges) there is only one Rhetoric class required, not two. I have graded papers of upperclassmen, where I've found that many students here graduate without basic composition skills, which jeopardizes their ability to succeed in their other classes, graduate on time, and find jobs post-college. I am keenly aware that if I don't teach my students how to write well, then likely no one will.

Yet even as my colleagues and I shoulder the heavy responsibility of preparing our bewildered students for 4 years of successful college writing, we are also expected to take a full graduate course load, research, publish, attend conferences on tiny budgets, pay rent in the most expensive city in Iowa--and in many cases, due to graduate fees that cut into our sub-poverty-line stipends, we either work second jobs or garner further student debt. In such circumstances, even grad students with the best of intentions can find themselves demoralized and treating their students as afterthoughts.

Simply put, underpaying and overcharging grad students shortchanges undergraduates of a quality education, which undercuts the mission of the university, and contributes to the alarming larger trend of our students graduating unprepared for the job market.

Now, neither I nor my colleagues entered this program naive, none of us expect to make money while in grad school. We are in fact grateful for the opportunity to study here. But since we fulfill such an integral function of the educating mission of this university, then please, for the sake of our students if no one else, remove our graduate fees once and for all and offer us a liveable stipend, so that we can better focus on teaching our classes, finishing our education, and representing this University.

One more item: at the Open Negotiation meeting yesterday, one representative for the college indicated that he was not worried about Iowa's competitiveness in attracting top-tier grad students, since Iowa offers one of the higher stipends in the Big 10. This statement bewrays an ignorance of the fact that Iowa does not just compete with the Big 10; I myself am from Washington state, and applied to schools throughout the Pac-12, the Rocky Mountains, and New England. Of the schools that accepted me, I picked Iowa in part due to its compensation package (though I was ignorant of the fees). That is, you are not competing with the Big 10 for top tier grad students, you are competing with everyone--and if you truly want Iowa to be a top tier institution, then offering top tier compensation is an important first step.

I've already taken too much of your valuable time, for which I thank you. Keep up your hard work, and I mean that sincerely.

Regards

Jacob Bender