Continuing their fight for a living wage for graduate student workers, the Graduate Student Employees Union on Wednesday held a rally across from the Couper Administration Building. As part of a larger statewide campaign, protesters assembled and distributed signs around noon on the Peace Quad. After a few people spoke, the crowd marched past the University Union and up the Spine, chanting slogans like “SUNY, SUNY, you can’t hide! We can see your greedy side!” and “Whose University? Our University!”

Following another round of brief speeches, organizers attempted to enter the Administration Building to hand a petition to University President Harvey Stenger. They were met by police and denied entrance.

“The goal of today’s protest was to show SUNY that we’re united behind our contract,” David Peita, an organizer for the GSEU and a third-year Ph.D. student in the cognitive psychology program, told Pipe Dream. “We’ve been continuously stifled by the bargaining team from SUNY with pretty much outright rejections of many of our proposals. We just dropped our wages proposal, so we are mobilizing around that. I think the No. 1 thing that any grad student would tell you that they want in their contract is a living wage.”

For over a year, graduate workers have been out of a contract. The union said that master’s and Ph.D. stipends are as low as $6,000 and $21,000, respectively, which for many, is their only source of income. Peita said that the living wage in Broome County is estimated to be around $40,000, as calculated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Heading into the 2023-24 academic year, the University implemented a raise that “brought up the floor” for Ph.D. students to $21,000, excluding both master’s students and international workers, Peita added. Those previously making over $21,000 received a $1,000 raise.

Throughout the protest, speakers acknowledged the various restrictions for graduate student workers, including the expectation that they work only for the University. For international graduate workers, Peita said that pursuing other employment would violate the terms of their student visa. Their spouses are unable to work in the United States.

In an email to Pipe Dream, the GSEU said the state has not accepted any of their contract proposals, which include international graduate worker protections and a prohibition on nondisclosure agreements for sexual harassment and violence cases.

“Graduate students are a vital part of the research, scholarship and teaching missions of the University, and we understand the challenges and financial burdens they face,” Ryan Yarosh ‘02, MPA ‘09, the University’s senior director of media and public relations, wrote to Pipe Dream. “Over the past six years, the University has invested $2.9 million to increase Ph.D. stipends, provide scholarships to cover broad-based fees for Ph.D. students who are full time and fully tuition-funded, and added $500,000 per year to support additional Provost Summer Fellowships for the summer months.”

“Binghamton University is proud of and recognizes the important contributions our graduate students make to campus,” he continued. “However, as with all collective bargaining agreements the university is not a direct party to the negotiations between the GSEU and SUNY.”

In an emailed statement, Holly Liapis, a SUNY spokesperson, said: “SUNY is actively at the table with the State and our GSEU/CWA students to negotiate a new contract. While these ongoing discussions take place, we will not comment further.”

Andrey Darovskikh, an international graduate student, said that in the over eight years he has been in Binghamton, he has realized the lack of University protections.

“For me, as an international student, being here and seeing other international students means that probably the SUNY administration and Binghamton administration will realize that they need to build some sort of infrastructure that is first of all, providing decent terms and conditions for living for international students and also doing something compatible with self-respect and some good sense of humanity,” Darovskikh, a Ph.D candidate studying psychology, said.

He said that during several years as an international graduate student, his son was born, and he had to figure out the inner workings of child care in the United States. These financial burdens can be made more difficult by the restrictions facing international students.

In February 2024, the GSEU met with SUNY and New York state for their first bargaining session to negotiate a new contract. Their petition, which now has around 2,000 signatures across New York, lists several other demands, including health and safety, discrimination protections and affordable housing.

The recent petition and protest follow a long history of GSEU activism. At a 2023 rally to eliminate fees graduate workers had to pay to the University, they draped their petition over the railing of an administration building staircase.

A petition drop will take place in Albany on Feb. 26 to lobby with members of the Communications Workers of America, their parent union.

“We all work really hard for this school,” said Camille Gagnier, BU’s GSEU chapter president and a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Translation Research and Instruction Program, in a speech. “Our teaching and research brings in not just prestige but lots of money. And I think we all have to ask why we’re being paid back in the form of mounting credit card debt for everything we give to this institution.”