Kristin’s Playground

Last week, the contract between the Graduate Employee’s Organization, the union that represents the grad student instructors (GSIs here - you may know them as TA’s at other Universities) and the University expired, after negotiations failed to produce a new 3 year contract both sides could agree with. The University’s Financial Aid department had published a number about how much it cost to go here as a grad student, and it happened that this figure was more than the current GSI salary. Because of this discrepancy in pay, GEO planned a two-day work stoppage last week to try and speed up negotiations. After the first day of the strike, negotiations resumed and an agreement was tentatively reached, preventing the second day of the walk-out.

While there are undergraduates who supported GEO’s actions, the walk-out did cause some hostility amongst others. Some were upset at the greedy grad students wasting their tuition dollars for missing a day of class, others blamed them for the huge rises in their tuition. Yesterday, I saw a flyer on one of the kiosks on campus with the headline: “Coming Soon: Higher Tuition. Thanks GEO”. The flyer talked about GSI salaries, all the benefits they get, and how outrageous their requests for higher pay were. It encouraged people to call the University’s president and ask why these “giveaways” were necessary when it would cause higher tuition.

Now, I’m all for undergrads getting involved in politics and the running of their university, but GSIs are not the overwhelming cost of running a university, and state funding cuts are the biggest reason for increasing tuition. Also, the flyer had a number of misleading “facts” about how much GSIs got paid. Even though I’m not a GSI, nor a member of GEO, this really angered me, so I felt the need to write a letter to the school’s paper about it. They printed it this morning (I only sent it last night at 8 or so - they must’ve been desperate for content!). You can read the full letter there, but basically the flyer quoted the full-time salary that a GSI would make ($13,977 per semester), when GSIs are almost always a half-time employee - meaning that they make half of what the flyer says. Also, When they quoted the new salary they would get, the quoted it for the final year of the 3 year contract, not next school year, which exaggerates the raise (in addition to again being for a full-time employee). It occurred to me (after I submitted the letter, of course) that the first number they claimed was also for the 2004-2005 school year, the first year of the newly-expired contract, exaggerating the raise further. This year, the median GSI made $15,199 for 8 months of teaching.

Again, I’m not a member of GEO (my husband is, for full disclosure), and I had mixed feelings about their strike, but lying on a flyer isn’t the way to fix the situation.

I just watched the premeire of Life is for the Living, a documentary about embryonic stem cells and the hope they could provide for people with debilitating diseases. It featured individuals and families affected by juvenile diabetes, Parkinson’s, and spinal cord injuries, as well as discussion of the science and the politics surrounding the issue. It was quite emotional and powerful to see people’s lives devastated by these diseases: young girls learning how to repeatedly prick their fingers to check their blood sugar, people whose lives were changed in an instant from a spinal cord injury, people slowly losing control over their bodies because of Parkinson’s.

The documentary discusses the basic science of embryonic stem cells - just what exactly makes them so powerful. They also discuss stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood and adult stem cells. While these latter types of stem cells are useful in their own right, neither of them have the potential of the embryonic cells, which can become any type of cell. The film points out that embryos that would be used for stem cell research are embryos that would otherwise be discarded, for instance, those embryos that are left over from in vitro fertilization treatments or are unfit for implantation. Advocates of embryonic stem cell research do not promote the creation of embryos solely for research; rather, they fight for federal funding for research on embryos donated for medical research by couples who have completed IVF treatment and no longer wish to keep the excess embryos.

The federal government currently allows federal funding on 21 embryonic stem cell lines - those that were created before August 9, 2001. These cells will never be able to be used for human treatment, however, as they became contaminated with animal cells during the cell-growth process. Public support for embryonic stem cells is high, and Congress has passed (more than once, in fact) bills that would expand federal funding for embryonic stem cells. Unfortunately, these bills have been consistently vetoed by President Bush, and the bills do not enough congressional support needed to override the vetos. The next president will hopefully understand these issues well enough to realize the potential that embryonic stem cells hold, but in the meantime, we will continue to waste valuable time, and our research will be years behind.

The film was engaging, urgent, sad and yet hopeful all at once. There is much work to be done in the area, and the sooner we allow it to continue, the better. Michael Rubyan, the film’s creator hopes to bring it to more theaters across the country, and I hope he does. Currently, the only other scheduled showing is in East Lansing, MI, but there are already requests for it in nearby states, so keep an eye out for it.