Now is the Time for Graduate Student Health Insurance at CUNY!

Posted by Carl Lindskoog on Mar 15, 2008 in Adjuncting, Health | 0 comments

Don’t look now, but the movement for graduate student health insurance is rapidly gaining momentum. Graduate students are speaking publicly about our lack of health insurance and mobilizing a surprising campaign to achieve this urgent need. Here is what has been happening and what is coming up in the future.

Last semester graduate students initiated a new phase in the campaign for health insurance. Since our union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), has made graduate student health insurance a core contract demand, we have been working together on this campaign. Capturing the support of graduate faculty has been a critical element. Last semester the Adjunct Project and the PSC collaborated on a letter to Graduate Center faculty informing them of our campaign and asking them to join us as allies. At the same time we began collecting graduate student and graduate faculty signatures on a petition demanding graduate student health insurance (available to sign online at www.gcadvocate.org). The response to these two initiatives has been tremendous! Many Graduate Center faculty members have pledged their support and graduate students have been enthusiastically collecting signatures on the health insurance petition. At contract negotiations in December, just a short time into our petition drive, we presented CUNY with a stack of petitions signed by more than 700 graduate students and faculty members, and the list of signatures continues to grow.

While our letter and petition campaign represented steps forward for the movement, the most exciting developments have come more recently. On Feb. 8, the New York State Assembly Standing Committee on Higher Education held a public hearing examining the Higher Education Commission’s preliminary report. Recognizing that the report failed to address some of our key concerns, Graduate Center students attended the hearing to draw attention to the report’s deficiencies. We testified to the poor treatment and low wages of graduate student and adjunct faculty. We urged the Commission to recognize the need for more financial support for graduate students. But one message at the hearing stood out above all the rest: we need health insurance and we need it now!

Since the hearing we have seen promising signs that our voice is finally being heard. Deborah Glick, chairperson on the New York State Assembly Committee on Higher Education, was receptive to our call for health insurance and could be a key ally in Albany. Thanks to the energetic leadership of Sean Murray, a doctoral student in Musicology, we have also had a meeting with Assemblyman and Chair of the Ways and Means Committee, Herman D. Farrell Jr., and we have the attention of New York State Senators Schneiderman, Lavalle, and Johnson. We are hopeful that once they hear our call, New York State legislators will respond by appropriating money for a health insurance system for CUNY graduate students that will match the existing system available to SUNY graduate students (see Ellen Zitani’s editorial “CUNY Grad Students Deserve the Same Health Insurance as SUNY Grad Students” in this month’s issue of The GC Advocate [page 3]).

It will, however, take more than a sympathetic response by legislators. Success will require that we take advantage of the momentum coming out of the recent hearings and build a movement that is impossible to ignore.

Starting immediately and through the month of March the Adjunct Project and the Health Issues Committee of the Doctoral Students’ Council will be implementing a new phase in the campaign for health insurance. First, we will facilitate a letter-writing campaign and a series of call-in days to push for action by New York State legislators. Second, we will be working with Graduate Center Professor Stanley Aronowitz and other faculty members to continue to build coalitions with Graduate Center faculty. Third, we will continue to collect signatures on the health insurance petition. And finally, we will organize a series of events to protest our lack of health insurance and rally support for the campaign.

We may be on the verge of achieving graduate student health insurance, but we need a strong push to put us over the edge. Please join us to achieve this important goal. We can’t do it without you!