April 26, 2020

Dear President Bollinger, Interim Provost Katznelson, Dean Alonso, Dean Andreos, Dean Begg, Dean Coll, Dean Janow, Executive Vice President Hungerford, Associate Provost Austell, and Executive Vice President Greenberg,

Hundreds of graduate student workers across dozens of departments at this university went on strike Friday. Many departments have achieved a unanimous work stoppage. More have joined us over the weekend and will begin striking on Monday. And still hundreds more will join us on a rent strike in university housing.

We take this action as a last resort. We wish that the Columbia University administration had adequately responded to the many petitions circulating over the last few weeks that asked for commonsense measures to protect graduate workers and tenants facing extreme financial and housing precarity in a pandemic, as well as a decimated job market in the new academic year. Because the needs of graduate workers and tenants have yet to be met, we reiterate these demands here.

1. Bring every PhD student up to a minimum of $6,000 in funding for the summer.

We acknowledge that the recent GSAS stipend addition of $3,000 brings the summer stipend of many students in years 1-5 above our basic minimum of $6,000. But many others are facing the immediate prospect of having no other summer funding or employment. We are particularly aware of the needs of graduate student workers with sick or unemployed family members and dependents. The proposed GSAS $3,000 emergency payment does not include everyone in our graduate worker community, nor go far enough to fund basic needs. We demand that every student, including students who have taken medical or parental leave or are beyond their guaranteed summer funding years, be brought up to a minimum of $6,000 in summer funding. We also demand that the existing emergency fund be extended and expanded to cover the costs of those whose rent, living, or medical expenses exceed $6,000.

2. Extend funding/employment eligibility and time-to-degree by one year for PhD students and one semester for MA student workers.

Everyone in our university community is experiencing significant disruptions to their academic, professional, and personal lives. The university has recognized the impact this crisis poses for research timelines by extending the tenure clock for tenure-track faculty, and several peer institutions have extended funding and eligibility for their graduate students for a full year. We demand Columbia extend these same protections to its graduate teachers, researchers, and scholars.

The current public health crisis has affected graduate students’ research in the same ways that it has affected faculty research. Graduate researchers have been forced to halt fieldwork and archival research, and to leave labs indefinitely. Many of the grants we rely on for research have been suspended. Universities have already begun to publicly announce hiring freezes for the upcoming year.

We demand that the university extend funding, eligibility for appointments, and waive the 7-year rule for those impacted. This will mean 6 years of guaranteed funding for every student no matter their current year. We also demand that the eligibility for internal fellowships be extended by one year.

This will also mean extending eligibility for university housing, I-20s for international students, and eligibility for healthcare coverage for all PhD student workers, as well as MA student workers. Additionally, all MA students currently enrolled should receive an option to remain enrolled at Columbia, without cost, for one additional semester of Extended Residence to complete their thesis or capstone projects with the requisite access to facilities, studios, or libraries.

3. Cancel rent in University Apartment Housing.

Columbia Residential continues to refuse rent relief to residential tenants despite widely-supported demands from Columbia People’s COVID-19 Response to do so. As a result of this inaction, tenants are at risk of housing insecurity or accumulating unpayable debt once the statewide eviction moratorium comes to an end on June 21st. The rent abatement for commercial tenants sets a clear precedent for similar measures to be taken for residential tenants.

The reality is that the enforcement of rent collection in a pandemic when people face serious economic insecurity is tantamount to a policy of soft eviction. We demand automatic lease extensions for either the full summer (rather than the one-month extension) or the year as desired by tenants. We further demand that the University de-link academic status from rent payments. The practice of linking academic status to rent payments can impact our ability to register enrollment at the university and therefore, by extension, can have a direct impact on the visa status of international students; with such leverage, the university unlike other landlords rarely has to enforce its evictions in housing court.

In sum, we demand that Columbia cancel rent for all tenants in UAH for the summer, automatically extend leases for the summer or renew leases for the year, and de-link its residents’ academic status and rent payment status.

4. Protect international students and maintain SEVIS status.

The situation for international students in the United States is becoming more dire by the day. International students/workers who were already targeted by the increasingly xenophobic immigration policies of this federal administration have become more precarious in the current pandemic. A combination of direct financial and legal support, advocacy efforts at the federal level, and flexible administration of academic and professional requirements with a view to maintaining affiliates’ wellbeing and security, are critical.

The University must reimburse all fees associated with student visa and SEVP applications, renewals, and adjustments (including shipping for documents) necessitated by COVID-19-related travel restrictions or disruptions and other COVID-19-related circumstances, including decisions to defer enrollment or take a leave of absence. The University must maintain international students’ active status within SEVIS regardless of current location, courseload or employment status, and continued access to employment and scholarships regardless of issues outside of their control. Where necessary due to disruption of academic progress, the University must extend the end-of-program date on the I-20 or DS2019 (without charging affected students additional tuition or fees).

Additionally, we call on Columbia University in coordination with the International Students and Scholars Office to advocate at the federal level for: an automatic blanket extension of 60 days for all I-20s with an end-of-program date in April or May of 2020, consistent with the J visa extension recently announced; a modification of USCIS policy to allow for OPT applications from abroad; the waiving of the Proof of Financial Support requirement for reinstatement or extension applications for the duration of the pandemic; and, non-consideration of all public benefits (including “stimulus checks” for resident aliens) received during this pandemic in any future public charge analysis.

Our overarching demand is that the University end its policy of austerity towards its constituent schools.

We demand that the above items be funded adequately by releasing sufficient money to the relevant university bodies in charge of managing these initiatives and/or disbursing these funds, namely the graduate schools and individual departments. Columbia University is a wealthy institution that has wrongly partitioned its budget. Even by the logic that the University simply cannot use its endowment directly to these ends, Columbia should take advantage of its

endowment to use as collateral to borrow at nearly 0% interest rates in order to address the needs of its workers in this crisis. We note that the University’s financial priorities at present include spending millions of dollars on fighting its workers’ unions, funding construction that further gentrifies Harlem, and paying some of the highest university administrative salaries in the world.

Graduate student workers do the academic instruction and research that occurs at this University. As instructors of record, we teach the core curriculum and language classes that comprise the foundation of a Columbia undergraduate degree. As teaching assistants, we do the vast majority of grading in large lecture courses and are the main points of contact for undergraduates in discussion sections, office hours, and over email. We also bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars of external funding through our own research and through our contributions to larger research groups and projects. Yet this reality is not reflected in the financial fiction that schools whose budgets are being slashed are net drains on the university budget. Our contributions to this school have been systematically undervalued. Columbia is now taking advantage of a crisis to further reduce the financing of entire departments and schools as part of a larger program of austerity.

We currently do not have what we need to continue teaching, working, or paying rent. We will not teach, will not work, and will not pay rent until the most basic needs of our entire community are adequately met.

Signed,

Columbia Graduate Workers on Strike