By Lydia Fiser
“Budget cuts” – the new buzzword.
Some mumble it under their breath as they float through their daily tasks. Others shout it in outrage and defense.
The arguments for and against the proposed cuts are endless. The numbers are piling, spiraling, warping.
First the education college was on the cutting block. Then nursing. Then geology.
Last spring it was $69 million that had to be cut from the UF budget. Now it’s $75 million.
The numbers are daunting. But what it comes down to is the quality of education and people’s lives, said Deeb Kitchen, a sociology teaching assistant and co-president of Graduate Assistants United, the union for teaching and research assistants.
Behind each million-dollar figure thrown out by the administration, are dozens of faculty members and thousands of students. Seventy five million dollars doesn’t hold much weight until you realize that that means teachers won’t be able to support their families, or that students will lose professors who changed their lives and taught them about life and the world beyond UF’s borders.
While the University is laying off professors, it’s not doing the same to graduate assistants, like Deeb, who often make just as large an impact on students, if not more, because of the amount of time that they spend with students. Instead, because GAs get paid from a different area of the budget, and usually about $14,000 a year compared to a professor salary of about $60,000, they are part of the University’s solution to the plummeting numbers of educators at UF.
But the University seems to be taking advantage of this steady supply of low-wage workers.
Graduate assistants already teach most of the basic undergraduate classes, and as more professors are laid off, the responsibilities of GAs are increasing while their pay remains stagnant, Deeb said.
Deeb’s been a graduate assistant since 2004, but he hasn’t gotten a raise since 2006. No one has.
While Deeb’s pay has stayed the same, gas and food prices have spiked, housing costs have risen, and Deeb and his wife Shannon had a baby.
“The people on the bottom are the first ones to feel [the effects of a flailing economy], and they’re at a breaking point,” he said looking to Shannon holding their four-month-old baby girl, Sariya, on her lap.
In addition to struggling with rising living costs on the same salary he’s been making for the past three years, Deeb’s graduate assistant position doesn’t help with education costs as much as it initially seemed it would. Since Deeb and other assistants are considered both students and employees, the University covers tuition costs but not student fees
“In some cases people are paying back their entire semester stipend in fees because those people are paid very, very little,” Deeb said. “We shouldn’t be paying fees for going to work.”
But they are, so Deeb and Shannon have found other ways to support their family.
In addition to teaching 144 students Principles of Sociology at UF, Deeb also teaches the same class at Santa Fe College, and Shannon works at the Public Library.
“I’m lucky I have a sugar mama to support me,” he joked. And “that my boss is very understanding. But there are other chairs that do not [allow graduate assistants to work other places] and people either have to find some other way to make do, or in some cases, work illegally.”
Even with their combined income though, Deeb and Shannon can’t afford childcare that averages $7,584 a year, according to the National Association of Child Care Resources and Referral Agencies
So on days when there isn’t anyone to watch Sariya, instead of hopping on his bike to get to campus and avoiding the infamous labyrinth of UF parking, Deeb packs his bag and Sariya’s, puts her in her car seat and ventures onto campus with fingers crossed that it won’t take an hour to find a parking spot.
“I’m lucky he can help watch her because childcare is so expensive,” Shannon said.
But despite the fact that the University continuously shoves aside Deeb and other GAs’ pleas for help, he keeps teaching, picking up the slack when the University fails to find a way to keep professors in the classrooms.
He does it because teaching is his passion. He talks about his students and classes with more enthusiasm than a kid on his way to Disney World.
And his students respond.
“Deeb’s the reason I’m a sociology major,” Kate Rapp said. “He’s an angel.”
Deeb was the first teacher Kate ever had at UF. He taught an introductory sociology class during the Summer B 2007 term, and his enthusiasm and teaching inspired Kate so much that she based her education and future on his influence.
“I’ve taken a lot of classes since then with a lot of professors, and every time I take another class I always find myself comparing the professor to Deeb and his teaching style to see how they measure up, but they never do” she said.
A university needs educators, and if UF can’t afford to keep professors, then shouldn’t it do what it can to keep the best GAs who fill the void in the classrooms out of passion for teaching and love for their students?
That’s what Deeb and his students would hope.
Graduate Assistants United has been negotiating a new contract with the Board of Trustees and attempting to get a pay increase worked into the new contract for graduate assistants to offset increasing living costs and contribute toward the additional work they’re taking on, but the board, as the final decision maker for the terms of the new contract, is resisting their request.
So as it is, the current GA pay rates remain the same, symbolizing what
UF is saying about the quality of teachers it puts in the classroom and the effect they have on students. For those making the decisions, it seems to come down to the numbers, not the people.
