U of M students join nationwide protests against tax bill

Our graduate students will complete their education at the UO and go off to careers in academia, the professions, and industry.

Graduate students participated in a walk-out from class and work Wednesday afternoon to protest the proposed Republican tax bill.

Students say the move could diminish the number of students who will even consider graduate school and hurt the chances for current students of finishing, impacting critical research.

The University is actively lobbying against the bill; President Christina Paxson P’19 has called U.S. Senators Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and is in the process of speaking to other members of Congress. Yes, so the particular provision in the House bill that concerns graduate students the most is this provision that would reclassify our tuition waivers and tuition reductions as taxable income. The University of North Dakota has 2,800 graduate students and about 575 receive assistantships and waivers. Increases in financial aid and restraints on tuition growth mean that it actually costs less to attend MI and Ohio State today than it did 10 years ago for many in-state undergraduates who receive need-based financial aid. That’s a value of about $13,000 for in-state students and about $20,000 for out-of-state students. Global students pay higher tuition than domestic students, so their waivers have the highest value.

Lazarus also predicted the House plan would prompt many Americans to study overseas.

“I might see my taxes jump from anywhere from 5 to 10 thousand dollars, depending on how they calculate it”, biomedical engineering graduate student Sam Tucci said.

At the University of Maryland, students said they felt like the tax plan treats them like trash, and they wore garbage bags to a rally.

I know the Congressman’s masters in the Republican Party need him to support this legislation.

“My professor is strongly in support and actually pushed class back so I could attend this rally”, Oschner said. She said this equals one month of her 9-month per year stipend.

The House passed the tax reform bill on November 17th, 2017.

Speakers also warned students that the tax would make graduate school too expensive for many potential students.

UC Berkeley graduate students turned out in force at Cal on Wednesday to protest a proposed student tax hike they say could prevent non-wealthy students from pursuing graduate degrees.

Nationally, CNN estimates some 145,000 graduate students “would take a big hit under the House tax plan”.

Despite a few notable reforms – such as raising the retirement age for new public employees – the state’s finances remain shaky, and its taxes are among the highest even in the tax-heavy Northeast.

This bill is still awaiting approval by both the House and the Senate.

That final version would make it to President Donald Trump’s desk. Didem Uca, the GSC student fellow who organized the event, emphasized that the event is mainly to provide information for graduate students and to encourage them to voice any opinions about the bill to their representatives.

Harding said she attended the work-in because, if the bill passes the Senate, she would experience a $5,000 tax increase that would make it very hard for her to save money with her $31,000 stipend.

“It would more than double my income, without seeing a penny of additional income”. There were also pieces of paper with words “I’m fighting to protect tuition waivers because…”

Graduate Teaching Fellows at the University of OR held a rally Wednesday on campus to protest the GOP tax bill.

“It not only crushes higher education, it affects the University in terms of helping research, classrooms, teaching, and I think it would be a real step backwards for this country in terms of higher education”, Constantoulakis said.

“For many of us, it puts us in an already very financially precarious situation”, said Laura Jaramillo, a Ph.D. student in the literature program.

“There are a lot of nervous people”, said Aaron Laushway, associate dean of students. Which is why it’s so puzzling that Republicans want to raise taxes on graduate students.

Earlier this month, the American Council on Education, on behalf of the Association of American Universities, of which IU is a member, and 45 other higher education associations, sent a letter to the leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee expressing strong opposition to several harmful provisions in the House legislation. She declined to describe the plan, saying instead she hopes graduate students will prevail and make the contingency plan irrelevant.