{"id":23803,"date":"2020-06-30T17:48:38","date_gmt":"2020-06-30T21:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/?p=23803"},"modified":"2020-06-30T17:48:38","modified_gmt":"2020-06-30T21:48:38","slug":"phd-students-object-to-coercive-new-stipend-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2020\/06\/30\/phd-students-object-to-coercive-new-stipend-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"PhD Students Object to \u2018Coercive\u2019 New Stipend Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/849879082&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true&amp;visual=true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc; line-break: anywhere; word-break: normal; overflow: hidden; white-space: nowrap; text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif; font-weight: 100;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/wtbu\" title=\"wtbu\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" rel=\"noopener\">wtbu<\/a> \u00b7 <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/wtbu\/phd-students-object-to-coercive-new-stipend-policy\" title=\"PhD Students Object to \u2018Coercive\u2019 New Stipend Policy\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" rel=\"noopener\">PhD Students Object to \u2018Coercive\u2019 New Stipend Policy<\/a><\/div>\n<p><b>PhD Students Object to \u2018Coercive\u2019 New Stipend Policy<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By Grace Ferguson<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Boston University PhD students are now facing a choice: come back to campus, or risk losing their stipends and health insurance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Last week, an internal memo to BU deans and department heads was leaked. The memo explains what options the PhD students have if they can\u2019t come to campus by September.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The memo encourages students who can\u2019t come back to take a leave of absence, which means they won\u2019t receive a stipend. Alternatively, students might be able to take online classes, but without stipend support.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some PhD students could get their stipends if they can do their research off campus, but that does not include students living outside the US. The university says it won\u2019t pay them for tax reasons.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Students without teaching appointments who come back to campus part-way through the semester could have their stipends resumed. A BU website suggests the students could be paid their lost stipend amounts, but it makes no guarantee.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The university\u2019s reasoning for the policy comes from its hybrid \u201cLearn from Anywhere\u201d teaching model. Classes are meant to be taught online and in person, so teaching fellows are expected to be in the classroom.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Students who fall into a COVID-19 high risk category were encouraged to request a workplace adjustment, which means they would disclose their medical condition to the university, and the university could make an accomodation for them. If granted an adjustment, the student might be allowed to teach remotely, or move their class to a different time. But the request form closed just days after the stipend news became public.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nicole Corerri is a PhD student studying religion. She\u2019s a teaching fellow, and this will be her third year at BU. She says students shouldn\u2019t have to weigh the risk of coming to campus or losing their stipend. And in her opinion, it\u2019s reckless for BU to reopen campus at this stage in the pandemic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt\u2019s just ripe for disaster, and it\u2019s better to take a cautious approach,\u201d Corerri said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Corerri\u2019s stipend allows her to pay her rent and daily living costs, but she doesn\u2019t plan on coming to campus this fall. She doesn\u2019t know yet what that will mean for her financially, but she says it\u2019s unethical for BU to ask her to risk her life by coming back.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI feel that it is a coercive demand by the university that doesn\u2019t allow myself and anybody related to the [university\u2019s functioning] to make a health decision on their own,\u201d Corerri said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jenna Rindy, another BU PhD student, agreed that the policy is coercive. She\u2019s entering her second year studying biology.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rindy has to take the commuter rail and the T to get to campus. She\u2019s worried about the risk of getting the coronavirus while she\u2019s on public transit.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThat train is packed every single morning,\u201d Rindy said. \u201cLike packed, like sardines, every single morning.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rindy says she\u2019s lucky to have a stipend that doesn\u2019t depend on her coming back to campus, but she still has to take classes. She isn\u2019t sure whether BU will let her take them online because she hasn\u2019t heard from any of her professors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even if Rindy can take classes from home, there are things she could miss out on. Classes that require group projects were much harder for her after BU switched to remote learning in March.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then there are issues of equipment. Rindy borrows a computer from the school because her own laptop can\u2019t do the data analysis she needs for her research. She knows other students might not have good enough wifi or computers either.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIs that going to affect their grade? Is that going to affect how people treat them? Probably, and that\u2019s unfair,\u201d Rindy said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Corerri tied the reopening issue to the Black Lives Matter movement. BU says it\u2019s committed to supporting minority community members. It\u2019s put out multiple statements and held an all-day event to talk about racism. BU is also launching its Center for Antiracist Research. But the pandemic has disproportionately affected minorities, and Corerri says reopening could contribute to that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAll of those components pale in comparison to the fact that they are not considering\u00a0 how this policy will impact Black, indigenous, and people of color in our staff, in our faculty, and amongst our [teaching fellows],\u201d Corerri said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Corerri had a reminder for undergraduates thinking about returning to campus.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThere\u2019s no guarantee that you coming back to campus, even with all the measures put into place, will keep you physically safe,\u201d Corerri said. \u201cThere\u2019s no guarantee for us as staff, faculty, and teaching fellows to be safe.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>wtbu \u00b7 PhD Students Object to \u2018Coercive\u2019 New Stipend Policy PhD Students Object to \u2018Coercive\u2019 New Stipend Policy By Grace Ferguson Boston University PhD students are now facing a choice: come back to campus, or risk losing their stipends and health insurance. Last week, an internal memo to BU deans and department heads was leaked. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17683,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1597,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23803"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17683"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23804,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23803\/revisions\/23804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}