Zimmer pressed with students’ concerns
By Dasha Vinogradsky
Relevant Quotes:
"Zimmer also said that graduate-student funding was a top priority for the administration and that the administration is waiting for the provost’s report on graduate funding before it decides what actions to take. He added that the changes to graduate funding might not reach their final form for several years."
"In his opening remarks, Zimmer said that the University is poised to become one of the few remaining intellectually serious schools with a rigorous research environment."
"President Robert Zimmer broke bread with a group of 25 undergraduate and graduate students last Friday night at a lively dinner hosted by Student Government (S.G.). The event was a part of ongoing attempts to foster open dialogue between the U of C student body and administration that some critics believe has been conspicuously absent since Zimmer assumed office in 2006..." [Read full article at http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/article/9927]
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3 comments:
It's hilarious to me that Zimmer has the nerve to hedge on a solution "several years down the line" when most graduate students are *here and now* going without health care, without rent money, without the basic supports for life, living below the poverty line, and may not even be able to continue studying until then.
"Several years" from now, every graduate student at the University will be covered under the new Grad Aid initiative. The rest of us will have simply expired from the enormous debt and poverty we have to deal with. So, problem solved. "Several years down the line," we'll all be gone.
Meanwhile, the Provost's so-called "recommendations" are the policy equivalent of a post-it note on a bleeding head wound.
So President Zimmer is essentially saying that they're going to do nothing.
...
Didn't they just remodel the President's mansion? Oh but I guess that didn't come out of the 27% return on our MULTI BILLION dollar endowment, did it.
It's really simple...As it becomes a choice between feeding my baby and staying in Chicago...well there isn't really a choice is there? Smart people in their late twenties who work hard shouldn't have to worry about feeding their children.
As a PhD candidate in the Divinity School, who matriculated from their MA program, I'm probably one of the pool that's gotten the shortest end of the shortest stick. Our MA years counted on the residency scale, which does nothing but penalize us down the road once we finally enter the PhD leg of the journey. The MA put me in debt more than I can express, and the words of comfort to "look at the big picture, once you get to the PhD there'll be funding" told to me when I was hesitant about even accepting the offer to work on the MA here, obviously now strike me as a sham - and a very shameful one at that.
When telling people that I receive NO living stipend whatsoever, and not even full tuition remission (being in AR1), they look at me with shock and disgust. Aren't PhD students supposed to be...compensated? Taken care of? Of course - they SHOULD be. And *knowingly* allowing so many of us to remain in *poverty* really is shameful. President Zimmer, and all complicit, should truly feel shame when they look in the mirror. Students shouldn't feel forced to choose between abandoning all their years of work and labor on their degrees, and being able to buy the already inexpensive food at the Produce Store. In all honesty, if the price of lettuce goes up on a given day from $.79 to $.98, I consider not buying it.
I recently told my adviser I might have to quit the program, unless somehow I receive full funding for next year. Either get a full-time job for a year or two to save money, eventually to try to return, or move home with my mom, where rent and food are free, sit in my old bedroom, and doing research. The choices at this stage are grim, especially considering the crumb of "health insurance" that many of us are getting this year will no longer be afforded to me next year.
The above is one story - and sadly, probably not even the worst - of graduate students who are literally living in poverty, unable to buy new clothes or upgrade to shoes without holes (yup, that's me again). Many have it worse than I - and I just heard a buzz of people trying to get food stamps.
For shame, President Zimmer.
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