To the Editor:
The leaders and members of the 11 organizations comprising Cornell University’s Graduate and Professional Student Diversity Council, along with members of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, the Reopening Committees and the graduate student community at large, urge the University administration to stand up for and protect its graduate workers. In response to COVID-19, the current graduate student accommodation policy requires students who do not feel safe engaging in in-person research or teaching to register through Student Disability Services (for personal health conditions) or to appeal to their supervisor (for other concerns). We believe that graduate students should be granted the autonomy to decide their own level of comfort with in-person research or instruction; leaving these decisions to anyone other than the student at hand is dangerous and will exacerbate existing inequities in our community. This policy will disproportionately harm those members of our community who are already marginalized by existing exclusionary practices within the university and society at large. This policy is also directly at odds with recent university-wide statements made regarding Cornell’s commitment to equity and racial justice.
We provide the following examples of how this policy will yield disparate impact:
- People who are low-income, queer, transgender, undocumented, Indigenous, Latinx and/or Black are less likely to have access to routine quality medical care. Students from these groups may not have documented diagnoses of conditions like asthma or hypertension that greatly increase one’s risk of COVID-19 complications.
- Many of the groups above – particularly Black, Latinx and Indigenous people – have already been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 in the United States. As people return to Ithaca and COVID-19 cases rise, these disparities are likely to present themselves in our community.
- Many Asian people have faced blatant discrimination linked to the pandemic that may affect Asian students’ likelihood of feeling safe working on campus. The mechanism to receive accommodations for general concerns about returning to campus is not sufficient to protect these students.
- International students have varied access to health care and may not have the required diagnosis or documentation to indicate their medical risk. Given current travel restrictions and the current political climate, it is also extremely difficult for international students to anticipate their ability to return to the U.S. to participate in in-person instruction. As per Dean Knuth’s May 1 update, international students not currently in the U.S. are only eligible for assistantships under very narrow criteria including being forced to come back to Ithaca despite potentially deadly medical risks.
- Graduate students living with families and friends have other risks to consider aside from their own. Some students, particularly those from low-income backgrounds, may need to frequently leave town to care for family members during COVID-19. It may be especially difficult to get documentation or approval to work remotely for at-risk family members or roommates.
Dean Knuth’s July 2 announcement about this graduate student policy is deeply worrying and leaves many questions unanswered. First, putting decisions about graduate student well-being in the hands of faculty and administration will inevitably give way to coercion and force students to unnecessarily disclose their own and/or others’ sensitive personal information. Dean Knuth reiterates that faculty have been “instructed not to probe for personal details,” but this statement is rather vague and not enforceable given the independence that individual professors have. Second, the “Processes for COVID-19 Accommodations and Options for Graduate Students” chart indicates that an “assistantship stipend may terminate…if assistantship duties cannot be conducted.” Graduate students have demonstrated during the Spring semester that all assistantship duties can be conducted completely online. This statement will inevitably discourage students from seeking out necessary accommodations for fear of losing their funding. Even under normal circumstances, when assistantship duties cannot be conducted, the Graduate School often helps students find alternative funding; in cases of paid parental accommodation, for example, the Graduate School typically covers the student parent’s stipend, and in other cases, there are provisions for providing emergency funds. As such, the Graduate School should make a commitment to find such alternative solutions in worst case scenarios. Finally, Dean Knuth says that “a key guiding principle is to strive to foster graduate students’ abilities to complete their degrees.” We strongly believe that the Graduate School’s priority should go above and beyond the completion of degrees to include graduate student safety, health, and well-being – even if at times this might impede degree completion.
Graduate students should be trusted with the agency to make their own decisions about their health and safety, as has been granted to faculty and undergraduate students in the plans outlined by President Pollack on June 30. Graduate students are the backbone of teaching and research at Cornell, and we demand the same degree of protection extended to all other members of the University community. We, the undersigned, propose that in-person TA and research duties be opt-in rather than opt-out, and that those who perform their duties remotely maintain the same level of financial compensation as those who work in person, at the stipend rates announced in Dean Knuth’s May 1 email to graduate students. Furthermore, students who do not opt into in-person responsibilities should be guaranteed that future funding will not be rescinded as a result of this decision and must be protected from any other future retaliation.
Stephanie Tepper, grad, Co-President, LGBTQ+ Graduate Student Association
Sam Bosco, grad, Co-President, LGBTQ+ Graduate Student Association
Alice Wolff, grad, Treasurer, LGBTQ+ Graduate Student Association
Trey Ramsey ‘12, grad, Board Member, LGBTQ+ Graduate Student Association
Gwen Beacham, grad, President, Graduate Women in Science
Janani Hariharan, grad, Vice President, Graduate Women in Science
Mikaela Spruill, grad, Vice President, Black Graduate and Professional Student Association
Andrea Darby, grad, Secretary, Black Graduate and Professional Student Association
Bam Willoughby, grad, Community Service Chair, Black Graduate and Professional Student Association
Gerardo Carrillo, grad, Treasurer, Latinx Graduate Student Coalition
Kelly Murray, grad, Co-Chair, Multicultural Academic Council
Andrea Patricia Llinas Vahos, grad, President, Cornell Latin American Student Society
Reut Shachnai, grad, Outreach and Community Involvement Coordinator, First Generation and Low Income Graduate Student Organization
Elvisha Dhamala, grad, Co-President, Graduate and Professional Students International
Bruno M. Shirley, grad, Graduate and Professional Students International
Sarena Tien, grad, Society for Asian American Graduate Affairs
Jeff Pea, grad, Graduate Student Representative, Committee on Research and Operations Reactivation
Arielle Johnson, grad, Graduate Student Representative, Committee on Preparation for Online Teaching
Rebecca Harrison ‘14, grad, Graduate Student Representative, Committee on Teaching Reactivation
Martik Chatterjee, grad, Student Advocacy Committee Chair, Graduate and Professional Student Assembly
Hannah Bidigare-Curtis, grad, Student Advocacy Committee Member, Graduate and Professional Student Assembly
Carlota Aguilar González, grad
Catie Ball, grad
Christopher Berardino, grad
Daphne Blakey, grad
William Cameron, grad
Vasileios Charisopoulos, grad
Casey Ching, grad
Alan Chiu, grad
Rene Crespin, grad
Tessa Devereaux Evans, grad
Millie Dibble, grad
Alexis Dziubek, grad
Maya Ezzeddine, grad
Teresa Flanagan, grad
Joshua Garcia, grad
Clarice Guan, grad
Gillian Hagen, grad
Natalie Hofmeister, grad
Breanne Kisselstein, grad
Shanthanu Krishna Kumar, grad
Kavya Krishnan, grad
Kasey Laurent, grad
Anna Lello-Smith, grad
Nathan London, grad
Natalia Lopez-Barbosa, grad
Rachael Mady, grad
Gavin Mosley, grad
Manisha Munasinghe, grad
Sarah Naiman, grad
Rachel Neugarten, grad
Chinasa T. Okolo, grad
Marguerite Pacheco, grad
Grace Phillips, grad
Alec Pollak, grad
Bharathy Premachandra, grad
Elena Sabinson, grad
Andrew Scheldorf, grad
Tessy Schlosser, grad
Adrienne Scott, grad
Juhwan Seo, grad
Wade Simmons, grad
Sean Sinclair, grad
Brianna Tate, grad
Meredith Welch, grad
Bam Willoughby, grad
Chencong Zhu, grad