On Tuesday, October 24, the Daily reported that graduate students on teaching assistantships would no longer be receiving tuition scholarships. They implied a lack of respect towards graduate students on the part of the Graduate College. We would like to take this opportunity to correct some factual errors and misconceptions reported.

Funding is decided by the individual departments; if English students feel they are poorly paid, they need to take it up with the English department, not the Graduate College.

In the interest of all graduate students, the Graduate Student Senate (GSS) has been working hard the last few years to provide tuition scholarships for all graduate students on research and teaching assistantships. Unfortunately, the funds to accomplish this are not available in full.

Even so, the GSS, with the help and guidance of John Mayfield, was able to obtain a fraction of the funds needed a few years ago. At that time, a specific group of graduate students on teaching assistantships (requirements being: students must have began school in the fall semester, be in their third consecutive semester of teaching, and must have had half-time, as opposed to one-quarter-time, appointments) were identified as a group that could be funded with this money.

When the program started, it was clearly stated the funding would be temporary and the support could be taken away at any time. No department should have used this temporary support as a selling point to attract graduate students. To do so would have been grossly irresponsible.

Last year, Dr. Mayfield was able to raise the total funding for graduate student scholarships. Instead of 60-70 graduate students supported, the graduate college could now help as many as 200-250 students. Since there were only about 60-70 graduate students eligible for the TA scholarship, another broader group of graduate students had to be identified for support. This turned out to be graduate students who had passed their Ph.D. oral prelim, but not given their final defense, and were within 5 1/2 years of beginning their graduate program.

The above scholarship is called the “All But Dissertation (ABD)” scholarship, and currently helps 202 graduate students with their tuition bills. This is also temporary as the funding could disappear at any time through no fault of the graduate college or Dr. Mayfield.

Graduate students do work hard, and in the opinion of the Graduate Student Senate, no graduate student on assistantship should have to pay tuition. The old TA scholarship, and the current ABD scholarships are positive steps in that direction.

We are deeply disappointed in the Daily Editorial Board’s lack of research into this issue, and their unprovoked attack on the Graduate College, which has worked brilliantly with the GSS to provide tuition scholarships to as many graduate students as possible.

Richard WalshGraduate student ChemistryVice-presidentGraduate Student Senate

Mark FreitagGraduate student ChemistryCommunications chairGraduate Student Senate