It’s been one year.

+ On March 23, 2020, the TUGSA Executive Board submitted an open letter to President Englert, Provost Epps, and the Board of Trustees in order to demand the provisions our community needed in the face of a global pandemic, economic shutdown, restricted access to healthcare, travel restrictions, and constant threats of deportation.

In that letter, we asked administration to use their resources and institutional power to expand health insurance coverage for grad workers and dependents, provide grads with summer subsidies, protect international students from deportation, and reimburse all student fees, including the additional fees for international students.

Graduate students overwhelmingly supported these requests, sending administrators over 4,000 emails demanding their attention to these issues. Yet, administration refused to engage with us—Temple employees and students—and ultimately dismissed the above concerns as trivial and unworthy of recognition.

+ We cannot ignore administration’s silence. On March 23rd, 2021, the TUGSA Executive Board is submitting a new open letter to Temple administration, reiterating and expanding upon our original demands. In it, we call upon administration to:

• Provide all graduate employees with a $500 work-from-home subsidy for each semester of the pandemic
• Reimburse all student and international student fees from each semester of the pandemic
• Appoint an international graduate employee and TUGSA member to work in and with the ISSS
• Provide a summer subsidy for all graduate employees and guarantee year-long funding for all international graduate students every year going forward
• Provide full healthcare coverage for all graduate employees and their dependents
• Provide a one-year extension of funding for all graduate students

We sincerely hope that President Englert, Provost Epps, and the Board of Trustees will respond to our open letter with direct and material actions of support for graduate workers.

+ In the meantime, however, TUGSA members will continue to organize for the rights and livelihoods of all graduate workers at Temple. While administration dodged our emails and turned a blind eye to grads, TUGSA’s membership has worked consistently and collectively to respond to grads’ needs over the past year:

• When administration refused to provide international graduate students with a summer subsidy, nor any assurance that they would be safe from deportation and the growing threat posed by anti-Asian racism, TUGSA members raised over $15,000 for unemployed international graduate students and started the International Student Caucus.
• When the university planned to reopen in defiance of public health recommendations, TUGSA members worked together to share resources and information, helping each other navigate the opaque bureaucratic processes required to seek COVID accommodations.
• When administration haphazardly closed campus in response to pressure from the City of Philadelphia, graduate workers were forced to transform their homes into makeshift offices and classrooms without compensation. TUGSA members stood together to articulate our need for a $500 work-from-home subsidy, with over 360 graduate employees and 140 faculty members standing together in these efforts.