Temple University needs to show grad students respect
As a Temple alumnus, I’ve been shocked and dismayed at the ruthless attack the university has launched against graduate students who they have forced to go on strike.
A Temple student shared with me an email that began: “As a result of your participation in the TUGSA Strike, your tuition remission has been removed for the spring semester” and continued to describe further financial hardships the student will face. That coldly destructive language shows a university that has lost interest in its students.
When I graduated from Temple University in 1997 with a PhD in History, it was common for the grad students to talk about the “Temple Challenge.”
By that we referred to the interactions with a Temple bureaucracy that we routinely found vast and aggressive. What you supposed to be the most minor contact would end up revealing an administration that wanted to cripple your attempt to get a degree from the institution.
But I managed to beat the Temple Challenge by making use of the advice of faculty who had many years of managing the beast. They knew where pathways existed to bypass obstacles or at least soften the blows.
Don’t get me wrong. Temple’s great faculty provided me with a top-notch education that has allowed me to have a satisfying career at the University of Cincinnati where I’ve received recognition for my research and service and even earned a fellowship at the Nobel Peace Institute in Oslo, Norway. And Temple faculty have continued their support and encouragement over the years.
I’ve even tried to pay back to the university by making regular donations and even becoming a member of Conwell Society of top donors for a time. Until recently weeks, I had thought that the administration that could make one’s life miserable and education impossible had mellowed, become more professional, more student-focused.
The university’s harsh attack on its graduate student union ended that perception.
It is now obvious why the students went on strike and, now, why they have to win. No university should get away with treating its own students this way.
Readers should note that a big public university like Temple typically spends no more than 22 percent of its entire budget on instruction. One of the reasons for this is because they pay graduate students so little and yet, in many departments, grad students carry a heavy load in teaching and/or grading.
It is often the graduate students who freshmen have their first college experience with. Graduate students are, in many ways, first responders in a typical large university system and should be accorded respect and compensation for their role.
Moreover, Temple’s grad students hail from many different backgrounds, and many are like me — a first generation college student whose father was a railroad worker. These grad students are not spoiled rich kids but young people trying to find their way in life by standing up for themselves.
As a member of the American Association of University Professors’ national council, we are fighting many different attacks on higher education all over the country by foolish governors and legislators. I never thought the Temple administration would be contributing to these efforts to undermine higher education.
Temple should be supporting these students, not ruthlessly trying to end their college careers. Temple has an opportunity to immediately correct course and show respect for the students who make the university work.
