The first day of the 2019-’20 academic year was far from the first day of activism for the Teaching Assistants’ Association.
Around 100 graduate students and other supporters of TAA protested this morning on Bascom Hill against low pay, segregated fees, the international student fee and a lack of workplace policies — all of which TAA have been campaigning for years.
“Graduate workers basically keep the university running. We teach, we do research, but at the same time, we're not getting paid a good amount for our work,” TAA publicity committee member Anna Meier said. “We just want to remind the administration after all of the work that we did last year that we're still here, we're still fighting on the first day of the semester.”
As protesters gathered at the base of the hill, some TAA members passed out flyers to students who passed by. These flyers read “The University Works Because We Do — Stand With Us!” and outlined TAA’s three demands: a raise in wages, fee relief for both graduate workers and international students and university-wide workplace policies.
The flyer states that some TAs’ annual wages only amount to $13,200, occasionally requiring them to take on a third or fourth job to support themselves.
However, the majority of graduate students are paid at least $20,000 per year and receive tuition remission — where the university waives the cost of tuition — valued at $15,000 per year, News and Media Relations Director Meredith McGlone said.
Graduate workers are required to pay segregated fees — the money that covers services such as bus passes, recreational facilities and University Health Services — which will add up to $1,451.96 over the course of this academic year, according to the Bursar’s Office.
International graduate students also must pay an additional $100 fee, which Meier said is “incredibly discriminatory.”
However, UW-Madison did raise the minimum TA stipend 9% for fiscal year 2020, which McGlone said will balance out the fees.
“Minimum TA stipends at UW-Madison have risen 41.9% over an eight-year period, a percentage well above other employment groups. These increases more than offset the amount graduate students pay in segregated fees,” McGlone said in an emailed statement. “We maintain that it’s fair for all students to pay segregated fees to support high-quality student services.”
The TAA’s last demand is for university-level policies covering workplace conditions for graduate workers, including research assistants and graduate student lecturers. These policies would cover issues such as sexual harassment and working additional hours, as well as allow graduate workers to participate in reviewing their effectiveness, according to TAA member Taylor Tai.
Tai said one goal moving forward is to raise awareness of these issues among undergraduate students, which the flyers will hopefully help with. She said it’s important for them to understand that TAA isn’t just “mad,” especially considering the good relationships graduate students have with teachers and undergraduates.
In general, undergraduates aren’t very knowledgeable about the concerns of graduate students, Meier said.
However, this isn’t their fault.
“The university does a very good job of not publicizing the conditions of graduate workers,” Meier said. “But we encourage undergrads to ask their TAs about what's going on and for TAs also to talk about workplace conditions because we probably have a lot of shared interests in this area — from everything from gender-neutral bathrooms all the way down to being generally underpaid, as a lot of undergrads are trying to work local jobs while going to college.”
Eventually, the protesters marched up Bascom Hill while chanting sayings like “Fees are wage theft!” and “Get up! Get down! Madison’s a union town!”
Graduate students kept chanting as around 60 of them entered Bascom Hall. After knocking on the office doors of Chancellor Rebecca Blank, Graduate School Dean William Karpus, Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration Laurent Heller and Provost John Karl Scholz, a TAA member slid a copies of the organization’s petition — with thousands of signatures from the university and local community — under their doors.
None of the four university administrators opened their doors for the graduate workers.
At the end of the protest, one TAA member reminded the crowd of the goals of the event, declaring it “not the beginning of a campaign, but the continuation.”
Update 9/5/19 2:15 p.m.: This article has been updated to include additional information on graduate student stipends.
