Syracuse University graduate students protest insurance plan vote

By Catherine Leffert, writer for The Daily Orange | Published on April 9, 2018 at 10:13PM

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Photo by Hieu Nguyen, Assistant Photo Editor

About 50 Syracuse University community members protested on the steps of Hendricks Chapel Monday afternoon to speak out against a new graduate student health care plan passed by the Graduate Student Organization last week.  

Syracuse Graduate Employees United, a group of graduate student employees who opposed the new plan and are pushing to unionize, organized the protest.

“Regardless of whatever Peter Vanable’s emails say, this plan is worse,” said Brandon Daniels, a graduate student. Vanable is dean of the graduate school.

GSO representatives, at their meeting last week, passed a resolution to switch to a cheaper health insurance plan. The new plan would reduce the cost of graduate assistant health care coverage by $994, according to a factsheet distributed by university administrators. A graduate assistant with a spouse or partner also on their health care plan would save $1,057, according to the sheet. A graduate assistant with a child would save $653 and a graduate assistant with a family would save $717 under the new plan, per the sheet.

GSO passed the resolution with 24 representatives in favor.

Before the Monday rally, Terese Gagnon, a graduate student in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, said SGEU wanted collective bargaining in the health care decision. SGEU, as a unionized group, would have legal power to bargain, but GSO can only bargain as much as SU dictates.

Brian Hennigan, another graduate student who helped organize the rally, said students want to show their dissatisfaction with not only the health care plan, but how little they have been told about it. SGEU wants to broaden the debate, he said.

At the rally, people held signs that read, “24 votes impacted 1,200 lives.” Various faculty and students, both undergraduate and graduate, spoke at the rally.

Joyce Kim, an undergraduate student, voiced concerns about the rising tuition costs and how SU will spend $100 million it plans to raise through the five-year Invest Syracuse initiative. She added that, instead of adding new resources and renovations, the school should focus on giving pay raises to professors and faculty.

“This initiative is going to cost $100 million, and we don’t know where the money is going,” she said. “A happy professor and/or TA makes for a lighter and better classroom setting.”

Several graduate students spoke after Kim, including Daniels, the graduate student.

Daniels said the new plan is worse for people who have chronic illnesses or families and emphasized that resistance is necessary for change.

Graduate student, mother and wife Christina Deka said that the health care plan negatively affected her and her family. She said that her daughter was born with a disability and her husband has chronic health issues. While the employee health insurance plan may benefit people who are young and healthy, she said the new plan is worse for her.

“I’m really, really angry about it,” she said. “It feels like SU doesn’t want students like me.”

Biko Gray, an assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, also spoke at the rally in support of SGEU. He said that he felt he has been used and taken advantage of as a black man. He said he felt that’s what’s happening to graduate students now.

Martin Gonzalez, a Ford Foundation Fellowship Scholar, said he has a scholarship that only about 3 percent of applicants receive. He said he does community service and works with children who think that he’s at a university that cares about him. That’s not how it feels, though, he said.

“I’m pissed off,” Gonzalez said. “They ain’t trying to support scholars.”

He asked the crowd of graduate students if they were angry, and most responded that they were.

Throughout the rally, graduate students yelled chants and participated in calls and responses led by students with a megaphone. One graduate student asked the crowd, “When grad worker health care is under attack, what do we do?”

The crowd responded, “Stand up and fight back!”