Students and faculty clashed with administrators, raising their voices and in one case leaving the room in protest, at a meeting organized by the Graduate Faculty Student Senate in response to upcoming changes in scholarship funding.
More than 25 graduate students sat or stood in the sweltering Wolff Room at the 16th Street building, confronting Provost Tim Marshall and the Dean and Vice Dean of NSSR William Milberg and Robert Kostrzewa about changes in the funding of Prize fellows at NSSR, an institutional scholarship that funds a limited amount of students in their doctoral studies.
NSSR students said these changes were made without their input or consultation.
They accused the administrators of a lack of transparency, saying they had not been involved in discussions, many saying they had only found out about the changes in early February, in an email sent by the administration.
“We look forward to the moment when we can sit at a table with the administrators and not at a town hall where they have the power to dictate our working and living conditions,” Tania Aparacio, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology said.
Ph.D students, who are not Prize fellows, said the changes would reduce their teaching opportunities.
In past years, fellows were required to work for 10 hours a semester as either departmental teaching assistants or research assistants in the third year of their fellowship.
Under the administration’s changes, fellows will need to work for 20 hours a semester throughout their fellowship. These hours will be unpaid.
This would significantly reduce the open positions for non-fellow students, professors and students said at the meeting. For example, 23 research assistant and teaching assistant positions are open to the 116 students in the sociology department. Starting next year, 20 positions will go to five students (three current fellows and two incoming fellows) leaving only three spots open for the remaining 114.
Current Prize fellows are also upset about the changes saying that working 20 hours a semester throughout their three-year fellowship would affect their work.
A student in the politics department said that having to work as an RA or TA for 20 hours in addition to working 40 hours a week to afford rent and food would affect her schoolwork and decrease her and other students ability to publish their work and conduct their own research.
The changes are an attempt to compete with funding other universities offer to their candidates, and an attempt to attract students to NSSR, administrators said during the meeting.
“Ph.D programs are shrinking but offering more money… there’s a difficulty in continuing to attract top students,” Dean Milberg said.
By increasing the fellowship to $23,000 from $20,000 and adding a $1,000 healthcare subsidy, administrators hoped to make the program more appealing to students. They would also reduce the number of fellows to two from three.
Students demanded the new funding process be put on hold until a new solution was found, something administrators were unable to guarantee at the meeting.
Though a decision must be made soon as letters to incoming students detailing their funding are expected to be sent out within the upcoming week.
Some students said they still need to send a response proposal to the administration.
“It’s great that we had this dialogue,” Emmanuel Guerisoli a Ph.D. candidate in sociology said, “GFSS should send a model to the administration- depending on what they decide students might take further action in order to make the administration reconsider workload conditions for Prize fellows.”
Administrators said they hope to come to a decision on the moratorium by the end of the week.
“I think a very strong message was sent today, if anything,” Alexandria Eisenbarth, a Ph.D candidate in economics said.
Tamar is a poet, writer, New York-lover and dweller. She studies jounalism+design at The New School.
