About 150 students from Yale University's professional schools of art, forestry and environmental sciences marched to provost Andrew Hamilton's office yesterday with signs and posters and clad in red to signify their massive debt. The art students presented the administration with a petition requesting free health care and debt relief, along with other appeals.
Students in the professional schools of law and medicine automatically qualify for debt relief, a program in which the university absorbs a student's debt after graduation if that student takes a position paying less than $43,000 per year. Art students do not receive this benefit.
The art students' protest showed their support of the university-wide strike by teaching assistants that the Graduate Employees and Students Organization is planning to execute on April 18, pending a vote by the teaching assistants. In an effort to unionize, teaching as well as non-teaching graduate students in the GESO will vote on Wednesday to decide whether the strike will take place.
The students in the art school do not receive the free health care or tuition remission that teaching assistants in Yale's graduate programs enjoy. Students in the School of Art paid $23,700 for the 2004-05 academic year, while those who work as TAs in the graduate programs often do not have to pay tuition.
"We're just kind of upset and tired of this," said Tom Brauer, a second-year graduate student in the art school who works as a TA and plans to vote in favor of the strike. According to Brauer, the majority of the graduate students in his program, in which about 100 students are enrolled, will also vote for the strike.
Brauer added that he believes the distinction between students in Yale's professional schools and graduate programs is arbitrary.
"It's just despicable that a graduate student would receive these benefits where a professional student doesn't," he said. Brauer noted that he and his fellow grad students believe the only discernable difference between the grad and professional student programs is that "graduate students receive these benefits and professional students don't."
Brenda Carter, a graduate student who is finishing her dissertation in the American studies department, said that as a TA she was able to make anywhere from $13,000 to $17,000 per year. Brauer said that he makes about $40 a week, and the school provides him with $3,000 for living expenses.
"I just think it makes the university look bad, because they're a strong proponent for the arts, but they don't support us at all," Brauer said. "I think we all love going to school here, and we love what the school has to offer, but we just want to make it better."
