As a graduate teaching assistant at Western Michigan University, I am appalled at the audacity of the university in recent negotiations with the Teaching Assistants Union to claim that teaching assistants are by any means well paid.

With the recent backlash against graduate unions in the Michigan legislature, it is important for the university communities in Kalamazoo and around the state to understand just how much hard work TAs do and to what extent these teaching assistants benefit the university. Teaching assistants at WMU often teach their own courses without supervision of a regular professor. TAs are expected to design and implement many freshman courses at the same level as professors while taking graduate courses, studying for exams and writing articles, theses and dissertations. Although TAs are supposed to work only 20 hours per week on teaching, preparation and grading often take them well beyond that limit.

At WMU, TAs teach more than 12,000 students per semester, bringing in a sizable sum of tuition dollars for the university. However, Western’s TAs are some of the lowest paid in Michigan, falling well behind other research institutions. The Teaching Assistants Union has been attempting to bridge that gap this year by negotiating a new contract, but the university’s bargaining team refuses to recognize the importance of teaching assistantships for the university as well as the graduate student.

To WMU, graduate students are cheap labor and nothing more. Graduate research at WMU is clearly secondary to profits brought in by undergraduate students. I suggest anyone who thinks otherwise, come sit in on a bargaining session as soon as possible.

K. ELLISON/Portage