Hi. I'm the NELC ABD who blogged my life-story here last January. I'm begging those of you in SOSHI who are in the Chicago area and can carry on this fight: PLEASE, PLEASE DON'T GO INTO HIBERNATION!!! Last year's decision by Soc Sci and Hum meant that in my department, incoming students with fellowships of $10,000 or more get health insurance.
Literally that's maybe 4 or 5 people. So much for the other nearly 20 other students who probably enrolled. And so much for the many dozens of hard-working students who have proven themselves over and over again for years and have NEVER had financial support and are battling it out for fellowships and working who knows how many jobs to try to make ends meet long enough to finish a dissertation. And believe me, very few of the incoming students without funding have any idea how their U of C grad education is going cost them 3, 5, 7 years down the road. No one is there at the end of each quarter to give you a reality check; no one is ever there to tell you that when you're finally ABD in 2010, you can expect to pay X thousands of dollars a year for tuition, fees, and health insurance. There's no transparency in this system, and that's only where our disgust should begin.
If I were in Chicago I'd be pleading with you in person: PLEASE DON'T LET THEM OFF THIS EASILY!!! They don't deserve it, and we deserve better. Yes, there's been a victory. But it was such a small and easy concession for the University. It can't stop here, it just can't.
Aside from the Health Insurance issue, there's another issue I think you should be aware of. I'm attaching below a letter that I desperately mailed around to all kinds of University officials last Spring. A few weeks after I sent my blog to this site, my mother suffered a near-fatal stroke and my husband and I had to come rushing home from Jordan. This letter will illustrate to you what happened when I tried to take a Leave of Absence to take care of family. It's only a matter of time before this happens to someone else.
6 May, 2005
To Selected Members of the U of C Community:
I am writing this letter to bring your attention to the hardship which a certain policy regarding students in Advanced Residency recently caused my husband, Joey, and me and to urge you to revisit and change this policy.
On February 4th we returned to Pennsylvania from Jordan where we have been researching our dissertations because my mother had a near-fatal stroke. For 10 days she remained in critical condition. When all was said and done, she would spend three weeks in various ICU’s and seven weeks in a nursing home. She is still undergoing nine hours of outpatient rehabilitation per week. My father works full time, I am an only child, and there are no other family members or friends who could have assisted in this situation.
One of the first things I did in making arrangements to leave Jordan was to notify my department and my division. I was told not to worry. So my husband and I were utterly blown away when we were notified, on the evening before our registration for Spring Quarter was due, that as we were in Advanced Residency, we would not be allowed to take a Leave of Absence and we would be required to pay $677 each ($1354 total) in tuition. Likewise we feared that our overseas medical insurance would no longer cover us, which would mean enrollment under bloody Chickering, at a cost of another $1104 each for coverage until the end of September. I pleaded with my department and my division that we just didn’t have the money, nor was taking out even more loans to finance our U of C education a viable option. We are two ABD’s with scary amounts of educational loans living, for this year, on one person’s grants; I was between grants when my mom took ill and had to suspend my Fulbright-Hays before I had even begun it (i.e. before I had received my first check). We thus had no source of income and if we were indeed required to pay so much money to the U of C this term, we would be forced to withdraw—our financial situation was indeed that serious. My pleas were met within my division by a complete lack of productive answers. It was clear from the few terse e-mails that my husband and I received that, in fact, our division was flat-out refusing to enter into any dialogue on the matter; I was merely given cold instructions as to how we would withdraw. With our division seemingly leaving us out in the cold, we nearly lost all hope when we realized that there was absolutely nothing our department and those individuals in it who were our staunchest advocates could do for us except to lend sympathetic ears and assure us that we were within our rights to demand more of the University of Chicago under the circumstances.
I find it impossible to put into words how that felt and how it hurt. I can’t tell you how many angry tears were shed over the next several days, how many times we asked “why,” how our plans for the future fell into total disarray, how often we wondered whether we had any future at the U of C at all, and if this might spell the end of everything for which had worked so hard. Why, we wondered, are students in Scholastic Residence allowed to take a Leave of Absence while students in Advanced Residence are not unless they themselves are incapacitated? Are family emergencies such as illness, injury, and death only supposed to occur when one is in Scholastic Residence? How can the University, overwhelmingly populated with graduate students, a population with aging parents, with spouses, children, and domestic partners who depend upon them, deny these students a request for a Leave of Absence to care for these loved ones when they are needed most? And simply because they are working on dissertations and not taking classes? Could and would the University deny such a request to an employee? How could the University demand of a student population already under heavy financial pressures that it simply “pay up” during times of even greater financial uncertainty and severe emotional distress? How can the great University of Chicago treat its students in this manner? I can’t tell you how embittering it was, that with my father a wreck, my mother in a nursing home learning to do everything all over again, our lives and our finances so unsure and on hold for who knew how long, that this was the best the University could do for two Ph.D. candidates in good standing. Our darkest hour had just become that much darker.
Luckily, a few things then happened that finally managed to inject some hope into the situation. First of all, we got in touch with Victor Muniz-Fratricelli of the Ombudsperson’s Office and he began to get wheels turning for us. Secondly, it turned out that our insurance company was far more flexible than our university; our coverage would continue until the end date of our current policy, even though we had returned to the States in violation of that policy (“These things happen,” the representative said.). Finally, we were put in touch with Dean Martina Munsters.
In the middle of April we came to Chicago for a couple of days to get matters straightened out. While at this point we knew we wouldn’t have to come up with the money for insurance, we were still without a source of income and I assure you that $677 is a substantial sum of money even in good times, especially when there are two of you. We met both with Mr. Muniz-Fratricelli and Ms. Munsters. It was clear that Mr. Muniz-Fratricelli had been working very hard on our case, meeting with several administrators on our behalf and finally providing us with answers to our questions. It was likewise apparent that Dean Munsters and Deputy Provost Roth had taken our situation very seriously and had spent a very long time learning the history behind the policy that now threatened us and trying to determine if they could come up with a solution that would get us out of this ridiculous situation. Joey and I are extremely grateful to these individuals for their sincerity, their time, their concern, and their patience with us during this period when our most negative emotions were running so high and were so unanimously channeled against the University of Chicago.
I had prepared myself, before going into these meetings, that the outcome probably wouldn’t be so good, and that we would probably leave the meetings still owing a lot of money. And that is exactly what happened. What we had not known, however (and had this been suggested to us a month earlier when registration was due, a lot of panic and emotion could have been avoided), was that we could set up a payment plan with the Bursar’s Office and pay the $1354 as late as mid-September, giving us time to come up with the money. This is what we have done, and we are utterly relieved.
We still take great exception, however, to the absurd policy that got us here in the first place, perhaps moreso now that it has been explained to us in detail. I concede that I understand the path which led the committee that decided upon the policy down this road some six years ago. No, for too many reasons to discuss here, you can’t have Ph.D. candidates—with good excuses or without excuses--vanishing for years on end, perhaps forever and without a trace, perhaps to resurface after two decades. But in light of what has happened to us, it really seems as if the University went way too far--letting the exceptions dictate the rules and tossing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. It is appalling enough that I, my parents’ only child, couldn’t take a Leave of Absence to tend to an ill parent, but it is downright scandalous that, had something happened to Joey or to me, or if we had a child and something happened to that child, the same rule applies. Frankly, it is shocking that the committee that came to this conclusion regarding Leave of Absence did so because the issue of who qualifies as family worthy of leave-granting became too complicated and because it didn’t want to put anyone in the situation of having to determine who gets Leave of Absence on a case-by-case basis. While such a conclusion—a one-size-fits-all policy--may be easy, callously consistent, and ultimately devoid of liability, it is hardly noble, nor is it fair. Why can there be no compromise? Why can’t we have one no-questions-asked quarter of leave to tend to an ill loved one with the option, if necessary, to re-apply for leave on a quarterly basis? Be it your child, your mother, or the cousin who is like a brother to you, be it an illness of 10 weeks or 30 weeks, life happens. We are not only students but we are adult human beings and we need and deserve no less than the freedom to handle it without having the University burden us in the manner in which my husband and I, who have consistently maintained the highest standards of the University, have recently been burdened. On the contrary, we should be able to depend on the University of Chicago’s utmost support in such times of need.
That devastating phone call that comes in the middle of night when you’re half a world away is the nightmare scenario that came true for me on 31 January. It was no one’s fault, I did not ask for it, and believe me, we would much rather be in Jordan working on those dissertations right now. To say that it has been a hard time for us would be an understatement. We wish we hadn’t needed a Leave of Absence, but we did. And it wasn’t there for us. We wish we hadn’t needed help from our University, but we did. And it wasn’t there for us, either, until desperate persistence and a stroke of great fortune put us in contact with a few people who really took time to understand the problem and help us as best they could.
I implore you to revisit this policy. I beg you to change this policy. Someday this will happen to another student, and shame on the University of Chicago if it puts someone else through this.
Thank you for your time,
Elena Dodge Corbett, NELC
Posted by andrew at September 22, 2005 03:46 PM