UF students' fees are due today, but a group of graduate students will protest payment following months of fighting over whether UF collects the fees fairly.
Graduate Assistants United, a graduate-student labor union representing about 4,200 paid teaching and research assistants at UF, asserts that graduate students should not be held to the same fee-paying regulations as students not employed by the university.
UF fees are collected before the graduate students are paid for teaching UF classes, and an extra $100 fee is tacked on if students pay late. GAU members argue that since the fees are due before UF pays them, a late fee is unfair.
GAU members plan to protest the fees from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in Criser Hall today. They last protested about fee policies on Oct. 31. "We've heard their concerns and their issues, and we're taking a look to see if there are any possibilities," said Steve Orlando, UF spokesman. "This is something we would address not through a protest or demonstration but through the collective bargaining process or consultation."
Katharine Westaway, a GAU member and a UF English graduate student, said group members plan to pay the fees on time, but they'll pay in cash to show how much money they're actually handing over.
"We really consider it to be a back-door tuition," she said.
Bret Seferian, GAU co-president and a UF history graduate student, said UF officials encouraged the group not to protest in October, but added that it seems officials have become more open since then.
After meeting with UF officials on Tuesday, Seferian said UF wasn't opposed to deducting the fees from graduate students' paychecks, but they refused to talk about waiving fees entirely.
Seferian said GAU is not asking for the fees to go unpaid, rather that UF pays them instead of the graduate students.
"It (the fee requirement) should be waived for people that are working at the university," he said. "It's charging you to do your job."
