8-Point Platform

TUGSA's 8-Point Platform

On 4 February 1998, approximately thirty members of the then-nascent Temple University Graduate Students' Association convened to draft a statement of the organization's platform. This document emerged from that meeting, and has since served as a defining statement of TUGSA's vision of what might be accomplished at the University.

Recognition as employees

Graduate students at Temple perform valuable services for the University in exchange for the funding they receive. Our labor as instructors and researchers is essential to the quality of undergraduate education at the University and to Temple's standing as a major research institution. The University works, in part, because we do.

Yet the agreements between ourselves and the University are disingenuously termed "awards" -- as though they were the product of institutional largesse rather than arrangements between employees and an employer -- and there is no official recognition of the quid pro quo dynamic which is clearly evident: an exchange of services for compensation. One does not "award" a plumber for repairing a leaky sink, nor does one "award" a mechanic for replacing a carburetor; one instead pays these workers for the labor purchased from them. Likewise, we Teaching Assistants and Graduate Assistants perform valuable services for the University, services which the University in turn sells to the undergraduate students to whom it refers as "clients" in the current administrative parlance. Our receipt of our stipends is explicitly contingent upon our providing this labor, and we therefore believe that the monies and benefits we receive from the University are properly regarded as payment, not as awards.

We do not, however, merely quibble with nomenclature. The University's failure to regard its funded graduate students as employees does not simply betoken the administration's lack of appreciation for the intellectual labor we perform; it also implicitly denies to us the rights which workers generally enjoy in dealings with their employers. We demand that the University recognize our status as employees, and that in doing so it acknowledge that we, like other employees at the University, enjoy the right to bargain collectively, a right exercised by 4,881 other employees at Temple. We also demand that funding decisions -- effectively the decisions to hire and fire graduate student-workers -- be subject to University-wide grievance procedures to ensure equity and fairness.

Long-term funding for graduate students

At the present time, the vicissitudes of the University's budget compel most graduate programs to offer their funded students positions of only one year in duration. Students are then required to reapply for funding each year, and many departments lack clearly-defined criteria for considering these re-applications. In past years, budgetary decisions have been delayed at the administrative level for so long a period of time that students did not learn from their departments until May whether they might expect to receive funding for the following September. Student-workers are neither effective scholars nor effective teachers and researchers under such radically insecure conditions. We demand that all funded students receive funding for the duration of their programs at Temple -- allowing of course for reasonable caps and for the potential termination of funding upon a student's marked failure to perform her clearly-defined duties as a student or employee of the University. A funded M.A. student should receive a package consisting of a complete two years; a funded Ph.D. student should receive a package of five years in duration.

Living wages for funded student-workers and part-time faculty

We demand that the University's graduate student-workers receive wages on which they can support themselves. Unfortunately, we lose many of our most promising prospective students to other schools which offer better pay; whenever we lose such a student, the reputation of the University suffers. Underpaid student-workers are often compelled to seek other work in order to sustain themselves, and this outside work can detract from their effectiveness both as scholars and as instructors or researchers. We therefore demand a living wage for all funded graduate students. Furthermore, we demand that stipends be adjusted annually with increases in the cost of living. We also demand better pay for part-time faculty, as many of us are ourselves hired as part-time instructors and we recognize that the plight of non-tenure-track faculty is inextricably linked with our own.

Health insurance for graduate students and their families

As Temple's health insurance system stands, a graduate student is forced to pay between 10% and 20% of her income for any medical insurance beyond the most minimal of coverage, and even the most expensive insurance available through the University includes neither vision nor dental coverage. The current health insurance options are unacceptable. We cannot have an entire population of students and student-workers who are uninsured or under-insured. We demand that the University provide free and comprehensive insurance for graduate students, and affordable additional coverage for their families.

Increased funding for graduate study at the University

At the same time that it sinks millions of dollars into development of the physical plant and the purchase of computer equipment, the University wanes in its financial commitment to graduate education. Last year, for instance, the College of Arts and Sciences cut its funding for graduate students by 10%, cutting one in every ten lines for teaching and research assistants. Simultaneously, the administration froze funding for the hiring of new professors, leaving many graduate programs without the means of filling significant intellectual gaps in their coverage of their respective disciplines.

A University cannot, however, consist of buildings alone, nor is technology a substitute for talented faculty and students. Temple's success or failure in attracting undergraduates will not ultimately depend upon the size of its sports arena, but will instead depend upon its reputation as a research institution, a reputation which is contingent upon the presence of strong graduate programs. We therefore demand that the administration reverse this flight of capital from graduate education, and reinvest in the scholarly work which promises to promote Temple's standing among universities much more than any structure of glass and steel might. We want to see the University fund more -- rather than fewer -- graduate students, and we want academic programs to have the ability to hire much-needed faculty.

Commitment to retaining programs

We are given to understand that the University is considering the elimination of some graduate programs which it does not consider cost-effective. We again urge the University to recognize the existence of a correlation between the quality of undergraduate education and the presence of a wide array of strong graduate programs. We also urge the administration to consider that Temple, as one of the only major public research institutions in the region, has a social and academic obligation to provide students of the region with relatively affordable graduate education in a wide variety of disciplines. To cut entire graduate programs simply because of low enrollment is to accept the slavish subservience to market forces demanded by systems such as "Responsibility Centered Management." RCM is not compatible with Temple's mission as a public research institution, nor will it ultimately prove profitable. The emergence of schools such as the University of Phoenix -- private, for-profit, and methodically tailored to corporate interests -- may indeed signal coming trends in higher education, but Temple's hopes for survival lie not in competing with such schools -- which are so structured as to be always more capable of catering to employers' needs -- but instead in providing a different manner of education entirely, one which is not so subject to the whims of supply and demand. We must, therefore, maintain an institutional commitment to even those disciplines which do not draw large numbers of graduate students or sizable corporate grants.

Renewed commitment to Affirmative Action program

As we witness the reactionary rollback of affirmative action initiatives nationally, we fear that higher education in this country is going to become the increasingly exclusive domain of white and wealthy students. Many recent initiatives at Temple appear to coincide with this disturbing trend of further whitening the university system. The President's "Report on Strategic Initiatives" -- bemoaning "an abrupt decline in undergraduate enrollment from the suburbs, particularly among white males" -- uses familiar racially- coded language when it emphasizes the importance of enhancing Temple's appeal to suburban students and asserts that doing so "requires a change in those 'mind-sets' that equate 'Temple' with 'City' and 'North Philadelphia' and 'crime.'" Likewise, the contentious changes in the format of Temple's radio station -- i.e. pulling Pacifica Network news programs, eliminating WRTI's community-oriented programs, and replacing much of the station's jazz programming with classical music -- the changes which the University defends as necessary "to widen the appeal of Jazz-FM to the entire potential listening audience and as a symbol of the University," might readily be read as an effort not so much to widen as to whiten Temple's appeal.

Unfortunately, Temple's strategies do not appear to be limited to merely symbolic gestures. The "Report on Strategic Initiatives," as well as previous documents such as "The Plan to Renew Temple's Mission," indicates a willingness to cut back or eliminate alternative admissions programs which help to diversify the Temple student body and provide educational opportunities for many students whose access to higher education would otherwise be severely limited. Programs such as the Russell Conwell Center have achieved demonstrable success with economically disadvantaged and/or academically under-prepared students from city schools, but it appears that University commitment to such programs is flagging. We insist that the University not sacrifice its populist mission in the interest of courting "elite" students, students who are -- for reasons of race, gender, class, or geography -- imagined to be more desirable members of the Temple community.

We demand that the University reaffirm its commitment to affirmative action programs at all levels -- in the hiring of faculty and staff as well as in the selection of graduate and undergraduate candidates for admission. We demand an increase in funding for Future Faculty Fellowships targeted towards graduate students from minority groups. We further demand commitment to maintaining a diverse undergraduate student population which accommodates those students whose opportunities might be elsewhere curtailed.

Development of the library

While the University spends enormous sums of money on the development of its physical plant and the expansion of computer services, the library's holdings remain relatively stagnant and the library has actually cut subscriptions to several journals. It is unconscionable to provide students with a state-of-the-art facility in which to watch basketball games without providing them with similarly well-apportioned facilities in which to study. Additional workstations are an important supplement to, but not a substitute for, an expansive and well-maintained collection of books and journals. A strong library is indispensable to a strong research institution, and we demand the University commit its resources to making Paley such a library.