We, the graduate student employees at University of Massachusetts Amherst are writing to you, the broader community, for your support.

The COVID-19 pandemic is raising new challenges every day. The task of keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe and healthy is enormous. While trying our best to adapt to the anxieties of this moment, we have encountered many problems that our employer can and should fix.

The University of Massachusetts must immediately cease the planned evictions of residents of North Village Apartments and Lincoln Apartments - university-owned and university-operated housing units with a mix of graduate and undergraduate residents, many with families and children, some with disabilities. For many months, residents have been organizing in protest against the university’s plan to demolish these residences and then later replace them with a public-private partnership. At this point, it should be apparent to anyone reading the news, that demolition and construction activities are by no means essential - people shouldn’t have to move, movers and construction workers should not be expected to work in these hazardous conditions. For a public university to enter into a private partnership for as basic a need as housing was always a bad idea: we never wanted our housing to be subject to the greed of private companies. For the university to continue this process right now would be unthinkable. The UMass administration agrees that having to move while needing to stay inside in a pandemic is contradictory. And we contend it is a public health and safety issue to compel residents to move en masse during an increasingly nationwide shelter in place order and the almost certain shelter in place order forthcoming for Massachusetts.

What is UMass going to do about it?

Our demands: stop the evictions and stop charging rent as long as the pandemic lasts, and at the very least for one year starting now!

Graduate students are typically employed only 9 months of the year. Over the summer months, many of us rely on leaving/subletting our rentals and going “home” if we can, to save paying rent while we are officially unemployed but still producing research for the university. For many of us, we cannot live without the income we would make employed near and around UMass Amherst over the summer. Many jobs that, under usual circumstances are competitive, will be altogether nonexistent because of the pandemic. Traveling or subletting is extremely hazardous, most acutely so for international student-researchers. All of us are students who work, yet we do not qualify for unemployment benefits. Does the university want the responsibility of hundreds of student employees who will not be able to pay for basic living expenses? What unimaginable damage and precarity will this do and thrust us into, and what will be the reverberating effects on the economy of the broader area?

What is UMass going to do about it?

Our demands: pay us during the summer for the work we do!
The minute UMass announced the transition to online teaching, most graduate student employees lost Spring Break, which is when many of us would normally take their contractually-earned vacation time off. We are entitled to a vacation payout for the work we did when we sacrificed our time off to find ways to teach our students in times of unprecedented stress. We do not have time now for bureaucratic machinery. The university should recognize all the extra free labor we did and pay us what we deserve!

What is UMass going to do about it?

Our demands: pay us for the work we did instead of taking our hard-won vacation time off!

If we can’t afford to stay in school, we will be forced to leave, and with our departure goes trained instructors who teach many of the University’s courses, mentors to undergraduate students, and novel research that renders UMass Amherst a recognized research University. We bring prestigious grants and tremendous monetary investments to UMass, we publish and raise the profile of UMass and its ranking, and we are on the front lines of helping undergraduate students learn how to learn at the University level. We are an important part of Amherst, Hadley, Northampton, Holyoke, Springfield, and surrounding communities where we live, work, and form connections. It is in the best interest of the university to make sure we have the bare minimum of financial security.

Please sign to show your solidarity with graduate workers!