In the Alligator’s coverage of UF graduate assistants’ struggle for fair pay, UF Provost Joseph Glover is quoted as saying, "(Graduate Assistants United’s) position is they want a lot of weight for people on the lower end," referring to GAU’s proposal to redistribute student fees. In this model, GAs with the lowest income would pay proportionally less in fees, and GAs with more income would pay proportionally more in fees. According to Glover, this "would be unfair to the people who are working hard, who are at the higher end of the pay scale." Presumably, this means Glover is working extremely hard, since he’s paid over $300,000 a year and doesn’t have to pay fees to work at UF. Plus, there’s his $50,000 raise in 2010. Compare this to the 2-percent raise for GAs currently offered by negotiator Bill Connellan. (In case Connellan doesn’t know, a 2-percent increase in poverty is still poverty.)
Glover’s comments are profoundly insulting for a couple of reasons: His stance is that the poorest GAs are poor because they don’t work hard. So, if they work harder does that mean they’ll get a fair pay increase? No, because it would be impossible to imagine how any GA could plausibly work harder. There’s teaching loads, lesson planning, grading and office hours, plus all the graduate coursework and dissertations, becoming experts and so on. I’ve never known a non-hardworking GA. In fact, the hours allocated to teaching undergrads at UF, as stipulated in GA contracts, don’t accurately describe the time necessarily spent on the labors of teaching. GAs’ stipends also vary depending on which department they teach in, so Glover is dismissing whole academic disciplines as lazy and undeserving of fair treatment and compensation.
Now, this exploitation is great for you if you’re an undergraduate student at UF. You get to take courses taught by very smart, very hardworking people who will give you a fantastic education precisely because they are willing to go above and beyond their job description. Imagine if GAs didn’t do this: Bye, GPA.
UF, in fact, bargains on the fact that GAs’ enthusiasm and work ethic will hold out despite the inequality. And they do hold out: The work gets done, and then some, no matter what UF pays. So why should they be interested in anything like providing fair compensation? And the status quo remains because GAs can’t strike.
GAU proposed to redistribute the weight of graduate student fees and remove the burden from poverty liners, but that proposal was entirely too rational for UF to accept. Which isn’t to say UF doesn’t have rationale. In The Washington Post, Glover is quoted regarding UF Online enrollments: "The market for freshman (sic) is by no means clear anywhere in the country," and UF is "trying different things to identify that market." To be clear: If you are a freshman at UF, you are, to Glover, a market niche. Your education is a commodity. For GAs, your education is your education.
Mitch R. Murray is a Ph.D. Candidate and graduate fellow in the UF Department of English.
