#UnionFacts

SUGSE is an anti-racist, feminist, labor organization that advocates for grad worker rights and protections at Brown University. Leave us a comment about why YOU want a union!

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because dependent coverage takes no account of what I actually get paid

I need a union at Brown because I am repeatedly told that the fact that once born my baby is covered under my insurance plan for a full thirty days before I must commit to some truly exorbitant dependent coverage is a great deal I should be really grateful for. Were I to add the two members besides myself who make up my family to my health insurance, the annual cost would total nearly third of my yearly income. That's without factoring in copays and deductibles. Instead my husband is on Obamacare and I think I will take my chances with medicaid for my child because even though I work more hours than most people I know and all of that work benefits the university (research, service, teaching), having a family while working at this Billion dollar institution is quietly, insidiously cost prohibitive.

#brownsuge #UnionFacts #FamilyStatusDiscrimination #ageism #sexism. 

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Bluestockings Open Letter

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Justice for Rasmea and power to all revolutionary and heroic women of color! By: Leila [instagram]

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We need better advocacy for international students, particularly regarding professional development opportunities and our ability to work on campus.

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accountability

There’s  no accountability in my department. I feel like I have no one to go to when there are internal departmental issues. 

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I am expected to TA even though I am on an external fellowship as part of degree requirements. I feel that I should be compensated fairly for this additional labor I perform for the department. 

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I’d really like better training for TAships

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In my department, there’s a huge difference in TA assignments. People have really different responsibilities which leads to a large disparity in time commitments. 

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#isthisthe1950s?

In my years at Brown, I know of several male graduate students who have been sexually inappropriate toward – and even outright harassed – female graduate students. Despite the fact that the female students went to professors and DGSs, the male graduate students never faced any repercussions. Nor have the departments in which SEVERAL of these incidents have happened introduced any proactive measures to their existing or incoming graduate students that this type of behavior is totally inappropriate. #patriarchyintheacademy

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A few years ago, I was at an event with members of the Corporation and at least one did not know there were Ph.D. programs at Brown. It was obvious that several others knew nothing beyond the simple fact that these actually did exist (I suppose an improvement over their colleague?) Little wonder that for many of my years here it felt like we were on the very low end of academic priorities here.  #thesepeopleoverseetheuniversity #universitypriorities #whatgraduateschool?

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#administrativefail

In one of many meetings with the dean of the graduate school regarding time to completion, he encouraged me to increase my publications by co-authoring journals with my adviser. He seemed to have zero comprehension of how the Humanities and some Social Sciences disciplines evaluate performance and credentials. But then again he also seems to have zero comprehension that graduate students are adults with lives and obligations unrelated to graduate work, which is probably why he told one of my colleagues in another meeting to just get on his parents’ insurance to cut costs. He’s 30 and married. I bet you’re thinking, “Maybe his true area of expertise is funding sources for underrepresented groups.” I hate to disappoint, but this is the same dean who had no idea what the Ford Fellowship was, much less that it is a potential resource for graduate students of color. Even upon learning about it, he expressed confusion as to why such a funding program was necessary.

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I don’t trust Brown to provide useful support even on filing taxes as a grad student, let alone to intervene helpfully when conflicts between my health needs and the demands of my dissertation advisor have threatened my professional future and my well-being.

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The Graduate School works in the interest of the university and the corporation, and that makes them unreliable as advocates when we have problems. I have seen it time and time again; you leave a meeting with an administrator thinking you have found an ally only to find that nothing changes in the coming weeks and months.

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As a woman who had children while enrolled as a graduate student at Brown, it never occurred to me that the Graduate School would help me to make a case for reasonable accommodations for my work (which I am entitled to under Title IX). I have heard from other grad parents that the parental leave policy is changing. Great. But my questions are who’s going to make the faculty in parent-unfriendly departments catch up and who’s going to advocate for parents when they come back from leave?

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We need a grad union at Brown because the Dean of the Graduate School once asked me what a T.A. does.

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why the public/private divide?!

Grad student workers have unions at many campuses nationwide. Most of these unions are at public universities. How are grads at University of Michigan or Berkeley different from grads at Brown? They aren’t! We are all workers with the right to organize.

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what collaboration?

Administration says that collective bargaining is “adversarial.” When grad student workers have a collective voice in our workplace conditions, we “transform the collaborative model of graduate education to one of conflict and tension.” How “collaborative” is your current educational model? And how much conflict and tension do you have to absorb without complaint to maintain your peaceful relationship with your advisors? Collective bargaining is only as “adversarial” as admin makes it.