Written by: Siwook Hwang, Kate Weimer
Last edited: 10/25/22
As you may have heard by now, there are some rumblings that Rick Miranda, the interim president of CSU, is considering a fee waiver program.
On one hand, this could be a tremendous win for graduate workers. We believe that even this ambiguous mention of a fee waiver program would not have happened without the amazing organizing work of our fellow graduate workers.
On the other hand, we remain highly skeptical.
The alleged program will phase in partial fee waivers over a few years until all fees are waived eventually. It seems that the CSU admin are dragging their feet to resist investing in CSU’s core mission of education and research. The Graduate Assistant Compensation Report of 2020 – put together by the former Dean of Graduate School Stromburger and Associate Dean Webb – clearly recommends that fee waiver program be put in place, not in three years, not in a year, not next semester, but immediately. Since then, the university has taken back millions of dollars from graduate workers as a condition of our employment.
Even if President Miranda is fully genuine in his intentions, we have no guarantee that the future president will follow through with the plan. Time and time again, graduate workers are given false promises and empty platitudes. We will reserve further evaluation until we have a written commitment and plan by the president. In the meantime we will continue to organize our campus, knowing that worker power is influencing the administration’s decisions, and will only continue to do so as we grow in numbers.