The Graduate Employees Union, which represents teaching assistants, is in the midst of negotiating a new contract with the university. Many graduate students choose to come to MSU thanks to competitive assistantship funding and benefits. If the university hopes to entice the best graduate students in the country to come to MSU, it must keep ahead of what other universities have to offer.

Instead, the university is proposing a zero percent increase in wages, in spite of the fact TAs do one-third of all teaching on campus and two-thirds of all the grading. Moreover, the university’s lack of professionalism during bargaining — arriving late and rejecting nearly all our offers — seems to indicate it isn’t interested in the welfare of graduate assistants. In order to afford schooling, incoming graduate students may be forced to turn down MSU for other universities that can meet their needs.