Dear President Schapiro, Provost Holloway, and Dean Woodruff,

The departmental petitions included below outline how Northwestern's funding policies for graduate students are both 1) completely out of line with the experience needed in these disciplines’ job markets and 2) counter-productive to PhD students graduating in a timely fashion due to the increased labor, stress, and time of constantly scavenging for funding. These funding measures have been immiserating for both students and faculty alike.

Northwestern University is one of the wealthiest, most renowned institutions of higher learning in the world. It rightly owes that reputation to its research, yet it is graduate workers who exhaustively collect the data that research rests upon.

Northwestern is justly proud of its teaching, yet it is graduate workers who provide the hours upon hours of extra tutoring, grading, feedback, and mentorship to undergraduates that ensure they gain a life-changing education.

Finally, Northwestern prides itself on the accomplishments of its graduate alumni, yet these alumni too were workers who more often than not required longer than five years to write the articles, finish the dissertations, and coordinate the colloquia needed to succeed in their fields.

The university works because graduate workers do; it only thrives when we can as well. NUGW calls on Northwestern University to guarantee 6th year doctoral funding now.