Graduate student workers across the country are helping each other unionize.
By Ella Fassler, Truthout
As a first-year master’s student and associate instructor in the School of Music at Indiana University (IU), Chelsea Brinda was forced to sell her blood plasma to survive. Her stipend of just $9,000 was far below Bloomington’s living wage. Eventually, she stopped selling her biofluids, got her first credit card and took out student loans.
Brinda, now a Ph.D. student at IU earning just $16,500 a year for teaching one or two courses a semester, told Truthout that she struggles to balance her own hefty workload as a student with her personal life, the courses she teaches and her part-time job as a COVID tester on campus.
“I feel like I’m shortchanging my students. I’m not giving them the best that I could,” Brinda said. “I’m kind of just going through the motions. I know that if I do try and do better, then it’s going to be a lot more work for myself. That’s not what they’re there for. They don’t deserve that.”
Recent Posts
Trump Says He’s Banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico From the White House
Take Action Now “These outrageous attacks only demonstrate how scared he is of an informed public,” said one press freedom advocate.By Stephen…
Bases Without Names: How Governments Rebrand the U.S. Military Presence
Take Action Now Across Asia, Europe and the Middle East, governments use an expanding vocabulary to describe sites that accommodate U.S. troops,…
Getting Into ‘Good Trouble’ Over Arc de Trump
Take Action Now A retired Army colonel flew in from Hawaii to make sure Trump’s arch doesn’t go up quietlyBy Jonathan Capehart, Substack On the…
AIPAC’s Network Has Already Spent $67.2 Million to Shape the Midterm Elections
Take Action Now The giant influx from American Israel Public Affairs Committee PACs is a case study in money distorting politics.By Derek Seidman,…