Yale Graduate Students on Hunger Strike!
Or are they? Seems, in order to receive more union benefits, Yale graduate students are entering in a hunger strike, right in front of Yale University’s President Peter Salovey’s home.
“Yale wants to make us wait and wait and wait … until we give up and go away,” the eight members of the graduate student union Local 33 announced. “We have committed ourselves to waiting without eating.” The university administration stated they understood the students concerns, but “…”strongly [urge] that students not put their health at risk or encourage others to do so.”
Sounds serious! Oh, wait. It’s a “symbolic” hunger strike. According to a Twitter post by a former Yale student, the protesters can leave and eat when they must.
The onerous conditions the students are protesting are a stipend of $30,000 annually, free health care, and their tuition paid in full. How the snowflakes survived this long is a mystery.
A non-hunger hunger strike is little more than stamping one’s feet and holding one’s breath ‘till blue, ‘till the demands are met. Childish, in other words.
Category: Politics
FIRST!
*AAAAAWWWWWWWWWW*, the poooow widdwe snowflakes are sad about ONLY having a $30K stipend? That’s a little less than some people without degrees make, so I say SCREW ‘EM!
Let ’em eat cake the sheltered bastards…
I see most of those snowflakes getting eaten alive by life in the real world once they’ve graduated but I wonder how many of them have Fathers and Uncles in high places that will shelter them even then?
Many, if not most, of them will continue in academia and never get to the real world.
To get benefits like that I had to enlist!
WAR STORY WARNING: When I enlisted only field grade officers got that kind of pay. Twenty years later as a CW2, my base pay was not $30K. When I retired and was hired by E&J Gallo as their military market manager at $21K annually, we were living high on the hog.
“Many, if not most, of them will continue in academia and never get to the real world.”
Mental clones of a UC Berzerkely denizen frequently stomped on here at TAH?
Fortunately, not all colleges are like that. My youngest daughter’s college, Husson University, in Bangor, Maine, won’t hire any professor who doesn’t have actual, real-world experience in their field of study.
In other words, if you want to teach, say, Forensic Science, they expect you to not just have some published work in the field, but to have a resume showing you have, in fact, WORKED as a Forensic Scientist.
If you have simply gotten your degree(s), and gone into teaching, and stayed there, then Husson doesn’t want you. I liked that attitude, and their results speak for themselves.
In fact, one of the Department heads is a retired Marine Corps Major who then went into Criminal Justice, got hired by NCIS, and retired from there as a station chief.
THAT is a University that “Gets it.”
I do have a portable BBQ that tows behind the truck and 3 very fat & happily succulent piglets…. you have this guys address? Maybe i will do a service for the news people covering this and and give them a good ol’ GA pig roast…. you are all invited too 😉
I like the way you think, Sgt Fon.
Me too. Bring a wading pool full of ice and stick a keg of beer in the middle and some cases of soda around the outside.
Maybe some Bourbon too……
https://youtu.be/k2GBQqSKl8w
Let’em eat NOTHING and die!!
Some asshole tried that at my local university to great fanfare from the liberal university and city papers…a few days later he declared symbolic victory and exited the scene to not quite so much fanfare…not meaning to go sectarian, but I recall IRA inmates in British custody doing it for real…there are other examples…whatever their convictions, I respect anyone who does it for real…even Gitmo shits
Dick Gregory did it for real and then he was no longer fat and no longer funny.
He ceased being funny about 1965. Saw him in ’68…wasn’t that fat and wasn’t that funny then, either.
So non-professors are going on a non-hunger-strike to protest not getting paid enough? Thought as much. In their defense…. $2500 a month pre-tax doesn’t go as far as it used to. I suspect the $2000 they may take home might cover their rent but in CT not much more. Sucks to make a lifestyle choice that pays poorly, you get to be poor and stupid at the same time.
They’re going to grad school in a place where tuition runs $60k/yr. Tack on the stipend, bennies, etc, it’s well into six figures per year.
Yeah, this is me not giving a shit.
Relieve them of their duties, send them away. It they don’t want to work, there is no reason for the University to keep them on the payroll. I suspect there are others out there who would be more than willing to take on their duties to take advantage of the benefit of a degree from that august institution. Then the ‘strikers’ can reap the benefit of their strike, no food, no degree, and no money. Sucks to be them.
Bill, the aren’t on a payroll. It looks like they are Grad students who want to be paid for going to school.
While they technically may not be “on the payroll”, JAOD (the stipend may or may not count as taxable income; I don’t have the time to research that now) as SEA observed above they’re getting total compensation worth mucho dinero.
Specifically, they’re receiving a hefty (about $40k annually – see my comment below) bit of compensation via tuition waiver; free healthcare (employer cost, usually around $10+k a year); a $30k cash stipend; and probably a few other perks that add up to a couple of $k. That appears to add to over $80k and could well top $100k if living expenses (around $20k annually) or other otherwise-costly fee waivers are included.
Bottom line: they’re already getting paid to go to school. They’re now kvetching because they aren’t getting paid “enough”.
Many of them also have a rude awakening coming post-graduation when they see what living expenses, commuting costs, and employer expectations are out in the “real world” for new employees with no experience and a graduate degree.
I also think the protests are foolish, but I’m going to play devil’s advocate here…
Living on 30K/year is tough when it doesn’t include housing/food allowances. I believe E1 pay in the Army is around $20K, and most of us agree that’s pretty low, but that 30K minus housing/food is … maybe even lower? (I’m obviously not comparing the life or risks of a grad student with that of a soldier, just the costs!)
So then there’s the benefits – free health care? Again, that’s a wash. So what about the $40K tuition waiver? Well, if we look at military retirement benefits -again, unfairly comparing 20 years of military service with 7 years of being a grad student, which is hardly fair!- then the estimates for retirement income for an E7 are nearly $1M over 40 years.
That comes out to an extra $50K/year for each of your 20 years of service. Yet I don’t think any E1 is thinking of his compensation as ~80K (20K base, 50K retirement ‘benefits’, 10K housing/food).
Long story short, I don’t agree with the protests because I view being a grad student as an apprenticeship of sorts – and that’s an investment where you always start off low in order to increase your earning potential later.
The tuition, a lot of which is ‘funny money’ anyway (since grad students in many fields actually bring in money through grants and are thus a net gain for the university’s books) doesn’t factor in to the day to day life. Similarly, an E1 can rightly argue for more pay and telling him he’s ‘earning’ $50K/year more than he thinks he is if he stays in doesn’t change the fact he’s being underpaid for now.
Mind you, that E1 can’t protest like this either, but the point is telling people their total compensation via benefits is much higher than they’re seeing on their bottom line doesn’t really make much of a difference in day to day life for people.
Sorry, LC – that comparison is ludicrous. An E1 in the military is performing a job – an entry level job, to be sure, but still a job. They are being paid to perform a service. And yes – their total compensation, when room/board/medical/dental/disability/etc . . . , is totaled up probably comes to the equivalent of about $35-40k a year. But until the new retirement program becomes mandatory (for those first entering next year, if I recall correctly), they have zero non-disability pension entitlement until they achieve 20 years of service. Relatively few persons who serve in the military opt to do that. So including “future retirement benefits” is bogus. Moreover, you didn’t include future income considerations for those Yale grad students post-graduation – which are likely to be both large and immediate vice relatively modest and starting 20 years from now and also include comfortable retirement. So you also aren’t exactly doing a fair “apples-to-apples” comparison, either. You need to include those considerations for both or neither. In contrast to a military E1, someone going to graduate school at Yale is not performing a service for pay. Rather, they’re going to a freaking Ivy League college for their own benefit. Their expectation is (or should be), “Suck it up now so I can earn big bucks later.” These individuals “protesting” are going to a highly-regarded grad school while at the same time getting (1) free tuition that would otherwise cost them $40k a year; (2) a cash stipend of $30k a year; (3) free medical (est $10k, likely more, were they to pony up the full cost); and likely other fee waivers totaling a few $k annually. In short, they’re essentially attending Yale graduate school 100% scot-free – with a few hundred dollars “walking around money” in their pocket each month after living and other expenses are paid. And on top of all that, they’re leaving school with zero student loan debt for grad school. Ask any other grad student paying their own way through grad school out-of-pocket or via taking out student loans if they’ll take that… Read more »
Those grad students are being paid to also perform a service. That’s why they’re getting the stipend.
They teach, perform lab work, organizational tasks etc for the college. Many grad school pathways dont offer such an arrangement. Some people don’t want to scut for low wages.
There are advantages to doing it though especially if you want to gain experience and have a chance to have your name on some potentially important research to pad your CV when you apply for a job or post-doctoral fellowship.
Fair enough, IDC SARC, if you want to go that route. So let’s do that.
You’re making the same logical error that LC did. You’re disregarding the bulk of their total compensation.
Include the tuition waiver, and they’re still receiving $80+k annually in total compensation. It’s a package deal, and the $30k stipend is less than 40% of their total compensation.
Hell, consider the tax break associated with the tuition waiver and it’s probably only about 25-30%. You have to earn substantially more than $40k to clear that amount, probably closer to $55k after FICA/Federal/CT state income taxes are withheld. And without the tuition waiver, they’d have to pay the tuition out of their “earned” income. So if they’re to be considered employees, that’s legitimately part of their total compensation package.
Bottom line: if you want to consider them “employees”, they’re earning the equivalent of well over $80k a year – and probably closer to $100k annually when tax benefits are taken into account. Still not a bad deal to go to school full-time – $100k/year damn sure is not “scut wages”. And as you note, it has other long-term career benefits as well (name on publications, experience, etc . . . ).
I wasn’t defending their position, just saying the stipend isn’t simply something that falls out of the sky.
I have no sympathy for them.
I’ll grant it’s somewhat ludicrous, but not as much as you might feel – grad students are required to provide some services (teaching, namely) and the argument they make is that this constitutes work.
There is also a risk of not graduating, and though the majority of grad students do successfully make it, a number fail out after 2-3 years.
Overall, my point was that if you offer a man $30K and put him up for free in a mansion worth $1.1M a year while he’s doing a job, and offer another man $30K and put him up in a home worth $100K a year while he’s doing the same work, the first man doesn’t think he’s earning a million bucks more because that’s the value of his ‘benefits’.
I still think the Yale students are wrong, too, but equating them as ‘earning’ in the $100K range because tuition and health care are covered by benefits doesn’t strike me as fair.
“Benefits” aren’t free, LC. Someone, somewhere pays for them.
If they’re employees, that’s part of their total employment compensation package – just like the employer share of medical insurance and paid vacation/sick time is part of a private-sector employee’s total compensation package.
It’s not the employer’s total cost, either. The employer has to pay a number of other costs over and above that for every employee (employer part of FICA, unemployment taxes, costs of other fringe benefits, etc . . . .).
Bottom line: an employee – whether government or private – virtually always receives a far larger total compensation package than the “gross income” line on their pay stub. This is an extreme example, but there are others nearly as extreme (think a pastor and free lodging, AKA the “parsonage” or the military and housing/rations allowances).
I’m well aware of that, and wasn’t arguing otherwise – I’m just saying that most people don’t factor in their benefits when their take-home pay is pretty low. That applies equally to soldiers and graduate students, even if the nature of their work and extent of their benefits vary greatly.
If you still don’t believe me, assuming you’re a healthy adult, which job would you rather have:
a) Base pay of $10K, ‘benefits’ of $10M in health care costs per year
b) Base pay of $100K, ‘benefits’ of $100K in health care costs per year
My guess is you’d feel a lot better about ‘b’, even though ‘a’ costs the employer lots more and is ~50x better in total ‘compensation’. If the base pay were equal, obviously ‘a’ would be better.
A few problems with your latest example, LC.
1. An employee’s total compensation includes the cost of that insurance, NOT the max possible benefit from that insurance coverage. So you appear to be calculating total compensation incorrectly above. (No firm pays even $50k annually on average for their share of their individual employees’ company-sponsored group insurance.)
2. The cost of the insurance to the employer may not be higher for a policy with higher catastrophic illness max payouts. That’s especially true if the policy has a large annual “out-of-pocket cost” deductible (e.g., what’s called a “catastrophic coverage” policy). Those are generally cheaper than policies with less generous maximum coverage limits having no/low annual out-of-pocket deductibles.
3. Even if we accept your scenario at face value (e.g., use max possible benefit vice policy cost as compensation), your assertion that your option “a” is preferable may not be true. Depending on someone’s particular circumstances, your option “b” above might well be preferable.
I’ve known a couple of folks that were only working because of their jobs’ employer-sponsored insurance coverage. They didn’t really need the money, but elected to work to continue their employer-sponsored insurance. Your scenario “b” (low salary but effectively unlimited health insurance) could be quite attractive to someone who had (or had a family member having) a medical condition that required expensive treatment (e.g., 5 figures monthly).
I was using insurance as a proxy to the tuition discussion – using it as a benefit (eg, $40K worth of benefits for free) isn’t accurate when it’s not really costing the university that. In fact, students in science & engineering often earn the school money by bringing in research grants – if a professor can get a $500K research grant because he has a student, the university takes a big chunk of that off the top for ‘administrative costs’. There really isn’t a common example of this I can think of outside of academia, so I tried to relate it to health care benefits and perceived vs. actual benefits. The point is, if the university says, “Ooh, but you cost us $40K a year in tuition!” while the student is actually earning the university $50K a year, then the value of the student’s compensation is a bit messier to calculate. As for my example, that’s why I stipulated a health adult. I guarantee you that graduate students don’t value the two years (not 6-7) of classes they take as being worth $40K/year, just as a healthy adult wouldn’t find much value from a $10M insurance plan over a higher base salary. I personally greatly value employer-sponsored health insurance and have, in fact, taken lower paying jobs because of it. But I don’t imagine that is a consideration many younger people would make. As an aside, if I were President, I’d forbid money from going to universities that charge as much ‘overhead’ on federal funds as many of the top ones do – I think places like Yale and Harvard are something like a 65% ‘tax’ on certain things, which is utterly ridiculous. I forget what’s exempt – capital purchases maybe? But if you get federal funding from, say, DOE, and buy a laptop to do your work, I think that laptop costs the taxpayer (via DOE’s budget) 1.65x as much. I have more problems with university administrations and their wastefulness than I do students complaining about their poor wages, even if I still ultimately don’t agree with their protests… Read more »
Non sequitur, LC. If grad students “didn’t cost the university anything” to educate, there would be no reason for the university to charge graduate tuition in the first place and graduate education would be free for all enrolled students. At most universities, I can assure you it’s not.
Educating a grad student is not “free” at any university; someone, somewhere, pays that cost. If it’s not being paid by the student, someone else is paying it on his/her behalf.
Here, Yale is simply choosing to include tuition waiver as part of selected grad students’ total compensation (I’ll go out on a limb here and assume that not all Yale grad students get tuition waiver; I’d guess it’s only those who enroll in or qualify for some specific program). Yale still has to pay internal expenses (instructor salaries, facility utilities/maintenance, security, capital equipment/maintenance associated with labs and other infrastructure, administrative/records-keeping costs, etc . . . ) to educate them. If they aren’t getting $40k annually from the student in tuition, those costs don’t go away. That means they’re simply getting the money required from another source.
The same is true of employer-sponsored insurance. The insurance is not free; even if the company self-insures, they have to pay associated costs of employee medical care. Either way, those costs are a part of their employees’ total compensation.
Either way, it’s a per-employee “cost of doing business”. And in either case, the cost is paid by the employer. In one case, that’s the costs associated with educating a grad student that would otherwise have been paid from the proceeds of the $40k in tuition the university elected to waive. In the other case, it’s the cost of the employee’s health insurance under the employer’s group health policy.
By the way: if I recall correctly, Yale also is paying for these students’ health insurance. So add another $10k or so to the cost to Yale for each student in the program in question.
Sounds like they aren’t getting enough white privilege and want more?
If they really felt bad about it, they’d give up those benefits to someone who really needs it and could live off that easily and be happy about it.
SO those snowflakes are getting a $30K annual stipend while their $40K tuition is paid and they feel like they’re being exploited? HELL, I have to work my ass off to make $70K and they’re bawling about their situation, I have no sympathy, let the school yank their scholarships and replace them.
I once spent some time in that area and knew a woman who worked at Yale in custodial services – basically mopping, cleaning, etc. Apparently their union was supposed to support the students who wanted a union because the big bosses said so. I asked her what she thought and she said, paraphrasing, “Fuck that! I get up at 4:30am to get to work to clean up after these kids and I get paid less than they do. Sure, some of their work may be hard, but they leave after 6 years and have so many opportunities. I’ve been here 17 years, working two jobs.. where is my golden ticket?”
That said, the people protesting and whining tend to be in the minority. From memory, they tried to unionize for so long and kept failing – eventually relying on dirty tricks to pass (no polling places near departments that didn’t support unionization, telling people the wrong date if they didn’t support the union, threatening foreign students with deportation unless they supported the union, etc).
The vast majority of the students there are smart, hard-working sorts who don’t deserve the ‘snowflake’ moniker. It’s the loud, obnoxious few who need a reality-check.
As an aside, tuition is quite a bit higher than $40K, I’m sure. It was higher than that when I lived in that neck of the woods a long time ago!
I think it said $40K somewhere in the linked article, so thus these snowflakes are getting quite a ride while they’re bawling for more, what a bunch of self-entitled little shits!
Grad tuition for Yale appears to be about $40k annually. Living expenses add another $20 or so.
http://gsas.yale.edu/funding-aid/tuition-living-costs
Speaking of tuition, I see that Janet Neapolitan/Napolean/Whatever, late of the admin whose POS head I won’t name, is in a spot of trouble. Seems she may have been cooking the books at UC, playing hide the money while asking for tuition hikes. Gotta love this stuff.
For anyone who just went “huh?”:
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/04/25/california-auditor-slams-uc-presidents-office-over-175-million-in-hidden-funds/
Yes, you read the link correctly. That was $175M.
And it comes to light just after the UCal system raised tuition for the first time in 6 years.
With apologies to the late Desi Arnaz: “Janet, you got some ‘splainin’ to do . . . “
Well, now, AirCav, that is an interesting find. Ver-r-r-r-y interesting.
Huh! 40K is correct for the grad school. I thought Yale was more expensive than that.You learn something new every day.
I definitely don’t agree with the whining, but I’ll play devil’s advocate below.
OK! Finally, a lefty issue I can get behind.
Henceforth, OWB, as a show of solidarity with these poor put upon students, will join their strike. I will also consume nothing edible, eat no sweets, drink no sugary drinks, or otherwise eat any food no matter how well it is prepared, in front of the Yale University Prez’s house. Shucks, I also will commit to not consuming any of the above proximate to his office as well.
Now, where’s my $30K?
Maybe they could symbolically eat shit and die.
OR symbolically eat shit and howl at the moon! I wonder if the little snowflakes will have to stop their wailing and go inside if it rains?
HMC Ret, API: why only “symbolically”?
I say let ’em eat nothing but Vegetarian MRE’s for the whole time they’re out there bawling.
PUSSIES! Every single one of them!
First, despite the expression, they’re not truly eaten and although they are meaty, they’re okay for vegans and vegetarians to have at. What’s more, in the end there’s a heapin’ helpin’ of protein.
How the fuck is there a labor union for students?
It’s the Connecticut Soviet Socialist Republic (CSSR). Organized labor supports the Party and is thus politically powerful there.
Wait, Wut? They are on a fake hunger strike? That is a mortal insult to real hunger strikers everywhere. People have died during hunger strikes for the causes they believe in.
They think grad students should not be poor? If you don’t want to be a poor grad student get a job.
At least they do serve a purpose. They lowered the bar below that of BLM to be more a more screwed up and worthless protest. I thought that day would never come.
The [ladies] doth protest too much, methinks. New Haven is 45 minutes away, I might have to go down there and eat a gyro in front of them, spilling tzatziki all down my Grunt Style tee.
Here in my America we have the right to be free, and that includes the right to be la stupid. And I have the right to call them on their bs.
Crybabies.
If I lived anywhere near there I would be VERY tempted to show up there eating a nice big sandwich (a Gyro would do just fine)right in front of the little snowflakes!
A big, juicy, meaty, highly-scented double cheeseburger and extra crispy fries, plus an onion blossom, accompanied by large cold or hot drinks (your choice) and finished with fresh, hot apple pie with vanilla ice cream.
I would set up the table 10 feet away from them, put a sawhorse barrier between them and us, and serve those passing by quite cheerfully. And I’d make sure the little darlings could smell everything they’re missing.
Or say, about three dozen White Castle burgers along with a few servings of Chili Cheese Fries from Steak & Shake?
You mean that I could actually be working on a PhD without paying tuition and making more than some of the other New Haven residents? Where do I sign up?
So much Fail at Yale.
Bugtussle Community College Vo-Tech seems like a real bargain, eh?
IMHO Vo-Tech Grads in say, Electrical, Plumbing, Construction (To include Equipment Operator), HVAC or Mechanic fields is automatically something a lot of College Grads aren’t in today’s job market, the Vo-Tech Grad’s skills are IN DEMAND.
Comparatively speaking, yes.
I love my job, where engineers who have a boatload of student debt making half what I do try to tell me how relay logic works when they’ve never been out to the field and seen it up close and personal.
Granted, my truck is my office, and the climate control isn’t the best (anywhere from -20 to +120, plus precipitation) but when a “dumb tech” can show someone book-smart but life-dumb a thing or three, it’s a warm fuzzy.
Come on now, these poor grad students have a point here. Let’s not be so quick to judge. First there’s the, ummmm, yeah, well, it’s so unfair that Yale does, that thing, you know, right? Yeah, I got nothing. These panty wastes should go ahead and STFU.
Ha! Wish I could participate in this counter-protest.
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/04/29/yale-college-republicans-hold-barbecue-next-to-union-hunger-strike/
Had I lived closer to Yale and knew about that ahead of time I would have gladly donated some food to that Barbecue. I’d even look at the “protesting” snowflakes and say “NO barbecue for you, you said you’re on a hunger strike, mmmmmkay?”