At Iowa State University
Graduate Student Voices
At Iowa State University
Latest News
June 2024:
[Signature Update]
We currently have petition signatures from ~27% of the graduate students at ISU, and signatures are valid for one year. This means that we will continue collecting signatures into next year. If you signed the petition for allowing a vote during Fall 2023 (whether on paper or through e-sign), we will be in contact via email with an e-sign link at the beginning of Fall 2024. Please re-sign when you get this email!
[Call for Help]
Several valuable Community Builders and members of the Steering Committee graduated at the end of the spring semester, and more people power is desperately needed to make sure the movement doesn't stall or stop completely. If you will have 1 - 4 hours a month next fall that you can donate to GSV, please consider helping with one of these responsibilities:
Internal communications: Sharing updates via email and Discord (weekly or monthly)
Event planning: Communicating with venues, acquiring materials, updating presentations, etc. (1 or 2 a semester)
Social media management: Creating and sharing event fliers, updates, and organizing news regularly via Instagram (weekly or monthly)
Canvassing: Helping share information and collect signatures (whatever works with your schedule!)
Each of these can be handled by more than one person, so please contact us if you are interested even if you think someone else might have already. If you have additional ways to help, that would be great as well!
[Graduating Students]
There are many people who have signed previously for whom we either have Spring/Summer 2024 or nothing at all listed as your graduation date. Please contact us if you are no longer a graduate student at ISU! This way we can keep an accurate count of the number of signatures we have, and you get fewer emails (if you want to continue receiving GSV email updates, contact us and we can change you to a "Supporter"). If you don't remember sharing your expected graduation date (we only have that question listed on the mailing list form, not on the approving-voting petitions), feel free to email that information.
Thank you all!
OUR MISSION
We, the members of Graduate Student Voices at Iowa State University, recognize that it is our right to organize for the benefit and protection of our workforce. Members of the community of graduate students, graduate student employees, and graduate student professional workers have the right to fair and humane working conditions. Those rights include but are not limited to:
Cultural and financial recognition of the value of our labor and the essential contributions we make to the University.
Health care that appropriately addresses our specific circumstances as a diverse community of graduate students, including older students, students with physical and mental disabilities, students with children and/or other dependents, and students with any life circumstances that may differ from the most common situations of undergraduate students, faculty and staff.
A living wage that includes full tuition waivers for all graduate students and guaranteed income and benefits through the 12-month calendar year.
A work culture free from aggression, bullying, harassment, discrimination, exploitation, and inappropriate expectations regarding working hours and work-life balance. Essential elements of a fair and respectful work culture include but are not limited to:
An effective grievance procedure that addresses abuses of power against graduate students by University faculty, staff, and/or administrative personnel. This grievance procedure must include mechanisms for holding accountable those who have abused their power.
Specific protections for international graduate students, who can be especially vulnerable to abuses of power.
Graduate students are an essential part of the University workforce; without graduate student labor the University would cease to function. Our rights in the workplace must be commensurate with the responsibilities given to us. As a community united we are stronger together than we are as individuals--better able to support each other and advocate for our rights as laborers at the University. We identify with the international labor movement and therefore commit ourselves to aggressively advocating for workers’ rights and democratic control over our working conditions.
Strength in numbers, power in voices: Unite for Graduate Student Voices!
CONNECT WITH US
Our email address:
graduatestudentvoices.isu at gmail dot com
CONTACT FORM
Join our mailing list
(Low traffic - just a couple of emails a month with news and upcoming events)
Access the contact form in a new tab (best option for mobile users).
Remember that your iastate.edu address isn't private, and for that reason we recommend signing up with a different email address. We will never, ever share your information with anyone outside our organization, and we treat your membership on our list as confidential.