The administration’s non-response to our email campaign includes a refusal to acknowledge the unique crises that face international graduate students during the global pandemic. Rather than provide their workers with the extra support that they need to make it through this pandemic, administrators are calling for budget cuts and expecting graduate students, who perform nearly a third of all academic labor at the university, to fend for themselves. Their negligence has affected all graduate workers at Temple, but has put international graduate students in an especially precarious position.

Many of Temple’s international graduate students are hired on 9-month contracts that are set to end on May 31st. But, because of their visa restrictions, these students are unable to work anywhere else. Matters have become even worse during the pandemic. Travel restrictions related to the pandemic response as well as a set of currently prevailing U.S. geopolitical positions prevent these students from returning home. The Trump administration has exacerbated this situation domestically by adopting xenophobic policies that systematically exclude immigrants from accessing COVID-19 relief programs. International graduate students have been made largely ineligible for CARES stimulus aid as well as unemployment insurance, and therefore have no access to the money that they’ll need to get through the summer. TUGSA has tried to compel the Temple administration to do the right thing, but despite the enthusiastic support of the Temple community, as well as local labor organizations, elected leaders, and national unions, the administration is still ignoring us.

In response to administration’s failure to support the Temple graduate community, TUGSA raised funds to support our most vulnerable colleagues. Our first goal was to raise $2,500 in order to provide $500 each to five international graduate students at Temple without summer work. With the support of our community, our campaign gained incredible momentum. We finished our campaign on May 31 with $15,000. We are now able to provide financial report to thirty international graduate students without work or government aid this summer.