March 14, 2020
Dear President Napolitano,
The Faculty Organizing Group at UCSC has just issued a very important letter to UCSC’s EVC Kletzer (copied below) in which they call for an act of “empathy, compassion, and responsibility” in reinstating the 80 graduate students fired for their participation in the COLA strike, because they are poised to lose their healthcare coverage at a time of the worst health crisis this country has faced in decades.
The Council of UC Faculty Associations endorses this call and addresses it specifically to you as an opportunity to rethink your harsh opposition to the just cause of UC’s graduate students. You know better than anyone how deep and sustained has been the disinvestment of the state in graduate education at the University of California. Take this chance to do the right thing and begin to work to do the just thing as well.
The Executive Board of the Council of UC Faculty Associations
Letter from the Faculty Organizing Group at UC Santa Cruz (This is posted here as it was part of the letter to President Napolitano, but the FOG letter is also available online, with a list of individual signers):
Dear iEVC/CP Kletzer,
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic. On March 13, the president declared a national emergency due to COVID-19. We appreciate that the campus is taking this health threat very seriously, as evidenced by its decisions to: (a) hold no in-person classes starting March 11, 2020, except for certain classes, and running through at least April 3; (b) suspend non-essential travel; c) cancel meetings larger than 50 people; and (d) encourage telecommuting as much as possible. We believe that these measures are consistent with an institution facing the vast responsibility of continuing to function while protecting the well-being of all its members in a swiftly changing situation.
At a time when we are likely to see a serious increase in COVID-19 cases in California, it is vital, even necessary, that everyone have access to healthcare. This is especially important in the US, where preparation against COVID-19 has not been as robust as it should have been. We trust that the campus is already considering how to meet the health care needs of our community for the next few months.
The global public health crisis changes the likely consequences of your recent decision to dismiss approximately 80 graduate students from their spring quarter teaching appointments. Since March 9, UCSHIP (the health insurance that covers most of UCSC’s graduate students) has been providing free screening and testing for COVID-19. Graduate students’ access to this health insurance is dependent on their employment at the university, so their termination also effectively terminates their health insurance coverage. To maintain their healthcare in spring quarter, dismissed students either face paying both tuition and health insurance premium out of pocket to retain their student status and healthcare, or taking a leave of absence and still paying $2885.60 for UCSHIP coverage. Because both of these options are prohibitively expensive for most graduate students – especially those who have just lost their income – dismissed students are likely to lose access to any healthcare. Many students, including international students, will have no other option than to return home at a time when travel restrictions may make this impossible. For those students who remain in Santa Cruz without healthcare, their inability to secure timely testing and take appropriate measures endangers the community as a whole.
With COVID-19 bearing down on California and beyond, it seems the worst possible time to leave any members of our UCSC community stranded without access to health care. Instead, it is time for all of us to act with empathy, compassion, and responsibility toward everyone on our campus. Given that healthcare is not yet recognized as a basic human right in this country, we urge you to reconsider your decision. Please reinstate graduate students who received Notices Of Intent to Dismiss for spring quarter so that they can continue to access their healthcare networks. To increase these students’ precarity, on top of the loss of their employment, livelihood, and planned courses of study, is not only dangerous to our community but antithetical to its most basic values. We believe that we can all agree there is a better way forward.
Sincerely,
The Faculty Organizing Group