They think they’re slick.

Syracuse University administrators Michele Wheatly and Peter Vanable sent an email Wednesday to the campus community that attempted to address the House of Representatives’ GOP tax bill and its effects on students. About 15 minutes later, graduate workers and their supporters rallied outside Hendricks Chapel to demand SU fill the chasm the bill’s increased taxes would leave in their budgets. To ensure this happens, they also called for the formation of a graduate student worker union to negotiate those terms collectively.

Wheatly and Vanable’s message seemed to preemptively define the terms of the rally by asserting SU is handling the issue and implying that students do not need to organize. They wrote: “…We will continue to work with the elected representatives from the Graduate Student Organization to advocate on behalf of our graduate students.” This statement portrays GSO as the only legitimate organization SU will negotiate with on his topic, which is exactly why we need to ensure the Graduate Student Union heard.

As it stands, SU’s response to the tax bill is not good enough, especially as it gets closer to affecting Americans following the passage of the Senate GOP’s tax bill. The bill is an attack on not just students, but the entire Syracuse community. It is a tax giveaway to the 1 percent.

Kevin Camelo | contributing designer

Syracuse already endures the worst rates of concentrated poverty in the country — No. 1 for Hispanic and black communities and No. 5 for whites. Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.) has voted with President Donald Trump’s agenda 89 percent of the time, including on this bill, per FiveThirtyEight. He’s claimed that most of his constituents will benefit from this bill, which is an outrageous lie. Working-class people have only hurt under Katko. He is an enemy of the 99 percent, and we need to strongly oppose him.

So, forgive me if SU’s idea of handling the situation — politely asking for the university to be nominally separated from the cycle of poverty that afflicts the rest of Syracuse — doesn’t fill me with hope.

The university must do more to oppose Katko and the bill. I join graduate students in demanding the administration condemn the tax bill and take steps to ensure graduate students can continue to afford school now that it’s been passed by the House and Senate.

But they’re not going to do this just because we ask. So long as negotiations go through the Graduate Student Organization, graduate workers are negotiating as students getting an education — not workers who perform necessary tasks to ensure the university stays open.

SU provides funds, meeting spaces and other institutional support to registered student organizations, and any organization that depends on the university in this way cannot adequately advocate for its own interests.

This is why graduate workers must form a union to advocate for their interests. They have a right to collectively bargain as workers — just as staff at SU and graduate workers at other universities already do.

Through tuition and hours of service, graduate workers help pay the salaries of administrators — not the other way around. It’s time we remind them of that.

Sam Norton is a senior advertising and psychology dual major. His column appears biweekly. He can be reached at sanorton@syr.edu.

Published on December 3, 2017 at 11:22 pm