GESO: The Issues
There are many improvements advocated by GESO members, and the best way to get a sense of what the important issues are in your department is to talk with a member of your department's organizing committee. She or he can fill you in on specific campaigns and issues that are mobilizing your colleagues.
However, to start your mind churning, here are some initial ideas:
Yale's Casualization of Teaching
Yale's employs Six Strategies to casualize teaching, that is, to get their teaching labor as cheaply as possible. Click here to read all about teaching at Yale.
Benefits: Health Care, Dental, Child-care, etc.
The benefits provided to other part-time Yale employees often exceed those provided to Yale's graduate teachers and researchers. Additionally, unionized graduate schools provide benefits Yale does not. Organizing has started to improve this, as you can see from the included history of GESO's successful 1998 campaign for free health care for all PhD students!!!
Dissertation Fellowships in the Sciences
All unfunded or underfunded research groups in the humanities and social sciences (except Economics) receive a guaranteed year of funding without teaching. The natural sciences should also have that guarantee.
Fees: Parking, Summer Gym, Continuous Registration, PPP connection
Given the income that graduate students bring into this university (either through overhead and tuition paid by research grants, or through teaching undergraduates who pay tuition), the least Yale could do is eliminate these fees.
Summer Funding
We are required to work for 12-months, but Yale does not pay all its grad students enough to cover its own estimated 12-month cost-of-living (approx $17,000). Such funding should be provided to everyone, so that we can make unimpeded academic progress all year. This issue is connected to the salary cap which prevents us from teaching additional sections to earn our own summer funding.
Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA)
The brainchild of GESO's "Accessibility and Diversity" committee, the idea of an OMA has now been recommended by both the Graduate Student Assembly and a faculty/student committee of the Graduate School. The OMA would improve the recruitment and retention of those from traditionally underepresented groups at Yale.
Teacher Training
Just after GESO's eventful campaigns of 1995, the administration promised to build a state-of-the-art "Center for Teaching and Learning" in the basement of the McDougal Center. The CTL has never materialized, and the plans have now been abandoned. Such a center would greatly improve TA teacher-training at Yale.
Housing
Yale should pass what it saves on unpaid property taxes to the graduate teachers who rent their properties at or above market rates.
English as a Second Language
International student teachers must pay for sub-standard English courses, yet American grad students can take unlimited, free, quality language courses in Chinese, Japanese, Italian, German, Spanish, etc. This must change.
Negotiations Petition
Over 1000 graduate students signed a petition in 1998 calling on Yale University to negotiate. Click here to read the petition and see the reactions it's engendered.
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This page was last updated on: November 30, 1999 |
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Graduate Employees and Students Organization |
http://www.geso.org |
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