After three years of outdoor picketing, editorial writing, resolutions, letters, meetings, mailings, a petition and even legal briefs, the University of Florida Graduate Assistants United celebrated a victory when administrators suspended the $100 annual international student fee charged to international graduate employees.

"This was a major issue at universities across the country and a cynical attempt to generate revenue from some of our most vulnerable scholars," says Todd Reynolds, UF-GAU co-president.  UF had transferred the cost of the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a system of surveillance required by the federal government, on to students as a matter of course. But a state legislative accounting review declared the fee was enacted without statutory authority and the administration decided to absorb the fee. About 2,800 graduate employees are affected by the decision.

Although SEVIS was initiated in 1996, its implementation went into high gear after Sept. 11, 2001, to monitor international visitors to this country.

Other graduate employee unions that have had the fees withdrawn include the Teaching Assistants' Association/AFT at the University of Wisconsin, which drew support for repealing the fee through the Madison City Council as well as through rallies, letter-writing, and a "grade-in" in 2004. Members of the Graduate Employees Organization/AFT at the University of Michigan don't pay SEVIS fees, either; nor do those at Rutgers, where if a graduate employee gets tuition remission, by extension all fees, including SEVIS, are waived. In Florida, only one other state institution, the University of South Florida, charges international student fees; Reynolds believes that may change now that UF's fee has been repealed.

To celebrate GAU's victory, the local hosted a Campus Equity and Solidarity Speak-Out on Nov. 9, hoping their victory would boost morale for grad employees at New York University, where graduate workers are struggling to win back recognition as a bargaining unit.

Since the fee campaign, GAU is more mindful of other international student issues, including insurance. "I think if we learned anything, it is that because a disproportionate number of grad workers here are international students, international student issues are labor issues," says Reynolds. [Virginia Myers Kelly]

November 17, 2005