Upon reading the letter "GEU members are fairly compensated" (SN 4/20), I felt compelled to respond. There are two major problems with this letter.

The first is the misleading calculation that graduate students (with a tuition waiver) have an "effective salary" of $49,901, a calculation based on working 40 hours per week, 52 weeks a year. I don't know anybody who works 52 weeks a year with no vacation. Most faculty only teach two semesters. Also, last I checked, we can't pay our rent with a tuition waiver. Our actual fall-spring pay is about $12,000.

Now without what we do get in waived tuition and stipend, finances would be much more difficult, so I'm not complaining.

However, this brings me to the second major problem with this letter, which states that "The Graduate Employees Union, or GEU, would like you to believe that graduate students are not fairly compensated for their work." This is not true and not the argument. The problem is that our current contract's term is expiring and up for renegotiation, but the administration is trying to remove the fairness we already have. Our current contract says:

"Employees with University parking permits shall have access to campus parking in all Faculty/Staff lots south of the Red Cedar River." They want to remove this from our new contract. They claim they won't take away our parking, but if they had no such interest, why would they be so adamant about removing this? You know the answer. With no such protection, we could be relegated to pay $6-$8 a day in a commuter lot just to come in to do our jobs. They also want to remove our annual cost-of-living increases.

All that is really being asked is that we continue to be treated fairly, something that is really not that unreasonable.

Steven Sy
mathematics graduate student