Around 20 members of the University of Iowa’s graduate student union gathered at Kindred Coffee on Friday to touch base on recent developments impacting graduate students and plan for upcoming actions.
The Campaign to Organize Graduate Students, or COGS, represents about 1,900 graduate students, according to COGS steward Regina Napolitano.
The meeting came two days after the UI English department sent a message to all its Ph.D. and Master of Fine Arts students rescinding the guarantee they will receive funding from the university while in their graduate program.
“We didn’t know this was going to happen,” Napolitano said.
Several attendees, including Ph.D. art history student Amelia Goldsey, said they attended the meeting due to concerns over the uncertainty of future funding.
“I actually heard about [potential funding cuts] from COGS first. So, that was disappointing,” Goldsey said, adding that she would have preferred to have been informed by her department.
Also expressing fear over future funding for his program, philosophy Ph.D. student Colin Troesken said he attended the Friday COGS meeting to become more involved in the advocacy work COGS leads.
“In general, I’ve been worried about recent attacks on marginalized people within the city and within the state,” Troesken said. “I want to get involved with groups who can protect these [marginalized people] that the university might not.”
According to Troesken, his department head said the philosophy program does not anticipate changes, but Troesken did not feel assured after that meeting.
“It felt like the calm before the storm, in a way,” Troesken said.
Another purpose of the meeting was to raise awareness for the union’s plan to boycott the UI’s One Day for Iowa event. One Day for Iowa is the UI’s annual 24-hour online giving event that encourages alumni, students, and supporters to donate to various campus programs, scholarships, and initiatives.
In addition to refusing to assist with fundraising, COGS is also planning a rally and teach-in event on the Pentacrest on March 26 at noon.
Napolitano said they do not believe the UI should ask graduate students to assist in fundraising efforts when they and other COGS members believe the wage they receive is too low.
“We just bargained for a new contract. They gave us a 6 percent raise over two years. We asked for a 25 percent raise over two years,” Napolitano said.
Earning an annual salary of $22,000 as a teaching assistant, Napolitano said the 25 percent raise requested by the union is still not a significant amount of money.
“The [3 percent] raise that we’re currently getting barely covers rent increases,” Napolitano said. “Because of inflation, we are pretty much making less money every year.”
Delaney Hoffman, a Ph.D. student studying photography, said the union’s upcoming protest will coincide with the One Day for Iowa celebration, also held on the Pentacrest.
“Our idea is to show up as a counter-narrative,” Hoffman said, referring to the image the UI presents at the annual event. “Remember that our academic freedom is actively being threatened, DEI has been stripped, and the Board of Regents is committed to a policy of over-compliance.”
Hoffman also expressed a desire for more direct communication between COGS and the Iowa Board of Regents. They said the union was informed that Board of Regents President Sherry Bates was scheduled to tour Van Allen Hall on Tuesday and hear graduate students present their research.
After quickly organizing a protest in Van Allen to express their frustrations with the recent bargaining session, Hoffman said COGS received word that Bates’ tour was cancelled.
“We don’t know anything that happened for sure,” Hoffman said. “I don’t think that the optics are great for President Bates.”
Also emphasizing the uncertainty of how recent legislation stripping gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act will affect the UI community, COGS organizing member Mars Grabar Sage said they hope the upcoming rally will be a place for concerned students and community members to connect.
“Hopefully, it’ll be a way for us to keep building our coalition because there are definitely going to be more things to protest coming down the pipe,” Grabar Sage said.