Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
The Post - Athens, OH
The independent newspaper covering campus and community since 1911.
The Post

Member of GSS addresses the issue of student workers and the low wages they are receiving. (FILE)

Graduate students work to implement parental leave policy

Four weeks after Elliot Long had a cesarean section in 2015, he was back in the classroom teaching because Fall Semester was starting.

With a then-1-month-old baby at home, Long, a transgender male who uses he/him pronouns, found himself rushing back and forth between campus and home.

“Besides just having major surgery and being largely incapacitated for two weeks, still kind of recovering from that and having to go back to teach was kind of rough. It was kind of awful,” Long said.

At Ohio University, there is currently no parental leave policy for graduate students such as Long. Policies have been proposed in the past, but the biggest problem has been trying to find funding to cover the cost of continuing support for the student, as well as finding someone to cover the classes the parent was teaching, Ian Armstrong, president of Graduate Student Senate, said.

Although there is no parental leave policy, graduate students are able to request a leave of absence. It is not guaranteed that the student will be financially supported, however, and the student could be at risk of losing their job as a graduate assistant.

“This may be sufficient for times when a student must take leave from their program for a semester or more, but does not suffice for students needing only several weeks of leave,” Angie Chapman, Graduate Student Senate vice president for legislative affairs, said in an email.

Armstrong said a policy that was recently proposed to the dean of the Graduate College, Joe Shields, would allow new mothers and fathers to take time off and would continue their financial support, something Armstrong said is important.

“There’s no good time in grad school to have a child because there’s such a poor workplace balance, I would say,” Armstrong said. “I’m sure there’s a lot of decision making that families do that say we’re going to have to wait because we just can’t financially afford it.”

One of the main hesitations of the university with implementing a similar policy includes finding the money to continue paying graduate students who are on leave, Armstrong said. He said that money could come from a central investment within the Graduate College.

Graduate and teaching assistants receive tuition waivers because they are students working for the university. Armstrong said university administrators worry that by adding those benefits, the federal government would view students more as typical university employees. If that were the case, those students would then have to pay taxes on their tuition waivers because university employees have to pay taxes on any education benefits they receive.

“If you were an employee, you’d have to pay tax on any education benefits you get,” Armstrong said. “My response is there’s a number of other institutions across the country who are doing it.”

Ohio State University has a similar policy that provides the graduate student on leave 100 percent of their stipend, the same appointment status and does “not have a negative impact on appointment status or opportunities,” according to OSU's Graduate School Handbook.

Since there is no policy in place at OU, Armstrong said it is hard to track how many people could have used it. However, he is “fairly confident” students are being affected by the lack of policy in every department.

“At the end of the day, this type of policy is also a meaningful way that the university can demonstrate that it values and supports its students,” Chapman said in an email. 

@maddiecapron

mc055914@ohio.edu

Powered by SNworks Solutions by The State News
All Content © 2016-2024 The Post, Athens OH