Updates

The Black Graduate Student Association (BGSA) is proud to publicly endorse the MIT Graduate Student Union (GSU) through a landslide community vote of 92% in favor.

We acknowledge that the Black student experience at MIT is not monolithic, but nonetheless the vast majority of Black graduate students have gravitated toward the union. There are many reasons for this support, including the fact that with a union, we can use our collective power as graduate workers to win a contract that implements changes the BGSA has advocated for in the past but MIT has failed to address.

More than 5,000 graduate workers act as MIT’s research engine, accounting for around 65% of the research workforce. We meticulously plan experiments that no one in the world has done before, iterate until the results are scientifically sound, and assemble manuscripts that ultimately contribute to the world’s body of knowledge. As the workers closest to our work, we are the experts on what resources we need in the workplace to successfully produce MIT’s world-class innovations and discoveries. A majority of graduate workers have signed our union cards because we fundamentally believe that we deserve a voice in our workplace — and unionizing is the only way to guarantee us legally-enforceable negotiating power to win the tools that we need to be outstanding researchers.

In June 2019, President Rafael Reif wrote to the MIT community that immigration and international exchange are the “oxygen” of innovation and prosperity, appearing to express a commitment from MIT to support international student workers. However, the following year, MIT threw hundreds of international students into crisis by suddenly ending remote appointments that had enabled them to work from their home countries during the pandemic. This was not an isolated event, but rather an intensification of a pattern of precarity and disempowerment that international student workers frequently experience. During this crisis and in the months since, we’ve spoken to many fellow international student workers who believe that MIT’s policies often do not reflect or respond to our needs and that forming a graduate student worker union at MIT is the best way we can compel the Institute to respect our rights and well-being. Here are some of the stories we have heard.

As graduate student-advocates, we know the needs of our community and the harm that happens when student voices are not part of the conversation. We know that graduate student-workers need stronger protections against harassment and discrimination, robust investment in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, affordable housing, and a living wage. To this end, we joined committees, councils, task forces, and advisory boards, determined to positively impact the experience of MIT graduate workers. Instead of making progress, we witnessed the MIT administration unilaterally ignore inconvenient recommendations, dismiss and exploit the service of graduate student-workers, and resist the changes we urgently need.

Since the MIT graduate student unionization campaign began Sept. 27, the strength of our collective voice has grown. Worker after worker after worker has come forward with issues impacting their research and student life at MIT, and a majority of graduate workers have already signed their union cards in support of unionization. Through thousands of conversations with our fellow graduate workers, we’ve highlighted student issues like affordable housing, COVID relief policies, and funding and compensation. In the wake of the resounding endorsement of the MIT Graduate Student Union (GSU) by MIT’s Black Graduate Student Association (BGSA), the MIT GSU wants to highlight our prioritization of one of the most-voiced graduate worker demands at MIT: a material, institutional commitment to racial and social justice.

All MIT graduate workers know that the cost of living in the Boston/Cambridge area is exorbitant. Now, imagine being hit with a surprise $6,000 medical bill — this is the nightmarish reality for some graduate workers at MIT.

Despite MIT’s extreme wealth, many of its graduate workers with chronic health needs do not receive affordable care with the currently-offered student insurance; moreover, relief funds meant to help with unexpected medical costs are poorly publicized and can be denied on arbitrary technicalities to the graduate workers who need them most. To secure comprehensive healthcare coverage and to make sure that every graduate worker can afford to receive the healthcare they need, we must come together to form a union.

By taking decisive collective action and forming a union, graduate students are making our research and working conditions a priority for the vast resources of the Institute.

The administration plans for graduate students’ economic precarity and denies our rights as tenants to decent housing. We deserve better.

It has been more than a year since MIT’s campus shut down to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. Since then, MIT has implemented a range of transformative pandemic policies: campus testing, vaccination, research closures and ramp-ups, and many other ways of making sure MIT students can safely live and work on campus. Unfortunately, despite MIT’s willingness to offset pandemic impacts, they have steadfastly refused a crucial pandemic relief policy: funding extensions for graduate students.

When advisors lose interest in projects (and students)

International students faced with marginalization, uncertainty and precarity.

MIT is fully aware of abuse, harassment, and mistreatment of its graduate students. It is doing nothing to change it.

The consequences of MIT sheltering abuse behind mentorship.

MIT’s culture is made up of our collective values and beliefs. This means we have the power to shape that culture into one that is more diverse, equitable, and inclusive — but we must all do our part. This July, after years of stagnation, the MIT administration promised again to do its part by hiring a senior officer for diversity at each of its five schools and the new College of Computing. But given the sheer difficulty of addressing each department's unique culture, school-level officers are not enough: Every department deserves diversity.

In the midst of historic uprisings against racist police terror and white supremacy, all major institutions must analyze the role they have played in supporting these systems of oppression. The status quo of tacitly accepting social hierarchies has finally been knocked out of equilibrium, but we are still far from a just society. This moment is crucial as we teeter on the balance between falling back towards the status quo or lurching forward towards progress. It is imperative that our institutions act now towards racial justice or risk seeing this opportunity slip away.

“You’re lucky to be here.”

The words from the MIT administrator hung in the air. I did feel grateful to study at MIT and receive a world-class education that hopefully one day would help me become an academic. But I was trying to explain to this administrator how unbearably difficult it is to pay my MIT bills while supporting my partner and child on an MIT graduate student’s stipend. And here I was, a day late on clearing my balance, being told to feel grateful.

There is a growing mental health crisis among graduate students, both at MIT and around the country. Thirty-nine percent of graduate students suffer from depression and 41 percent suffer from anxiety. A study on the mental health of economics PhD students at top tier research schools, including MIT and Harvard, reported that one in ten had contemplated suicide in the past two weeks. This alarming incidence of mental health issues among graduate students nationwide is equally — if not more — prevalent in the MIT community. In March 2019, the MIT administration sent a survey to current graduate students to assess their experiences at MIT. Of the nearly 2,100 graduate students who responded, nine in ten reported feeling overwhelmed, two in three felt isolated, and one in three felt so depressed it was difficult to function.