The Chair of the Graduate Workers Party at Ohio University wrote a letter discussing Joseph Shields’ Op-Ed.
After reading Dr. Shields' Op-Ed, I felt that a graduate student needed to respond.
The fact of the matter is, stating our "effective compensation" at $22.44/hour is meaningless. At the end of the day, there are faculty in some departments who feel the need to create food banks for their graduate students. It does not make any sense to tell people, who need these food banks, that their compensation is okay because some number is large.
Furthermore, quoting this number is a canonical example of missing the point. I was out in front of Peden Stadium protesting because graduate workers feel taken advantage of by Ohio University. It is no wonder that they feel this way when people can (and sometimes do) lose their graduate appointments due to unexpected pregnancy, hospitalization, injury or illness. Graduate students here do not have adequate employee rights to protect them, and Ohio University fails at providing adequate compensation and healthcare.
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Dr. Shields asserts that the university has other investments, and he so much as says that graduate stipends are not really a priority. At least, that is how I read his statement. It is hard to do otherwise, especially when we recently saw that Ohio University was willing to drop 1.2 million dollars on a house.
Now, an administrator is waxing poetic about optimizing investments in times of constrained resources. This Op-Ed simply reads as a way for Ohio University to weasel out of actually caring about its graduate students.
Shehzad Ahmed is a second-year PhD student studying mathematics and the Chair of the Graduate Workers Party.
