As of now, the University’s 

proposals for GSI and GSSA 
salaries and benefits do not 
appear to respect the value 
of 
their 
labor. 
Graduate 

students play a particularly 
tangible role in undergraduate 
education, often serving as 
a valuable link between a 
student’s desire to learn and 
achieving mastery in a subject 
by teaching small discussion 
sections 
that 
complement 

large lecture courses. GSIs 
alleviate much of the burden 
of 
grading 
and 
additional 

instructional 
hours 
that 

would otherwise fall on the 
backs of faculty. In addition 
to doing this labor, graduate 
students have coursework of 
their own to attend to, making 
it hard for them to find time 
to supplement their income 
through other jobs.

While 
the 
relationship 

between 
graduate 
students 

and the University is complex 
given their dual status as 
students 
and 
employees, 

our 
GSIs 
deserve 
better 

than an administration that 
refuses to recognize the need 
for substantial changes to 
accommodate 
rising 
costs 

of living. In exchange for 
their invaluable labor, part 

of what the members of GEO 
wish to gain is a raise of 17.5 
percent over three years to 
accommodate the increasing 
cost of living in Ann Arbor, a 
request to which, as of March 
15, the University responded 
with an offer of substantially 
less over the next three years. 

GEO is also seeking changes to 

graduate worker health benefits 
that cap the amount spent on 
copays for mental health services, 
which many graduate students 
seek out. Additionally, they urge 
the University to expand paid 
parental leave to be inclusive of 
all parents, not just birth parents, 
allowing graduate students to 
assist their newly grown families 
when they need it most. While 
reasonable negotiations are to 
be expected, we are seriously 
concerned that the University has 
not budged on its proposal for a 
meager increase in wages and 
other benefits.

Most 
troubling 
is 
the 

University’s outright refusal 
to negotiate on the issue of 
unionized diversity labor by 
graduate students. Payment 
for diversity work has been a 
major issue for many campus 
movements. 
The 
students 

the 
University 
constantly 

seeks 
out 
for 
input 
and 

labor 
on 
diversity 
issues 

are often the very students 
most 
disenfranchised 
by 

the current campus climate 
they’ve been tasked to help 
repair. Recent events have 
shown 
that 
addressing 

barriers to equity on campus 
isn’t easy for anyone. Asking 
graduate 
students 
whose 

time and wallets are already 
extraordinarily 
strained 

to spend time on diversity 
efforts 
without 
pay 
and 

unionization 
flies 
in 
the 

face of the principles the 
University 
claims 
went 

into the DEI plans. If the 
University is serious about 
implementing its DEI plan, 
it must pay for unionized 
diversity labor.

GSIs 
and 
GSSAs 
are 

integral 
to 
our 
campus’s 

continued 
functioning, 
yet 

the 
University’s 
attitude 

toward the current contract 
negotiations with the GEO 
have 
not 
recognized 
the 

serious struggles they face 
under the current contract. 
This 
bargaining 
period 

could have been a test for the 
University to put the principles 
of this year’s DEI plans into 
action. We’re not confident the 
University has passed.

T

he work required to 
make the University 
of Michigan campus a 

more diverse, more equitable 
and more inclusive community 
of scholars requires a long-
term 
commitment. 
That’s 

why, when we developed and 
launched our Diversity, Equity 
and Inclusion strategic plan 
last fall, it was a five-year plan.

And, like with any plan of this 

magnitude and significance, 
there were immediate calls for 
us to do more and do it quicker. 
That’s a natural reaction.

But today I want to make 

sure 
that 
our 
community 

knows just how important 
this work is for all of us. It is 
so important that there is a 
team of more than 200 UM 
employees on the Ann Arbor 
campus who are devoting all or 
a portion of their professional 
lives to this work.

Additionally, 
there 
are 

countless numbers of faculty, 
staff and students across our 
campus who are assisting by 
sharing 
their 
experiences, 

offering 
their 
advice 
and 

volunteering their services in 
many different ways.

Student 
involvement 

in 
the 
DEI 
planning 
and 

implementation processes is 
critical. Many units across 
campus 
have 
involved 

undergraduate and graduate 
students in their work. My 
office has a student advisory 
board. The Division of Student 
Life has established two DEI 
Student Advisory Committees 
made up of 25 undergraduate 
and 
25 
graduate 
student 

volunteers. I recognize and value 
the historic and contemporary 
contributions made by students 
to the University’s progress with 
respect to both the DEI planning 
process 
and 
more 
broadly 

diversity, equity and inclusion 
over many years at the University. 

A fundamental motivation 

for creating a strategic plan was 
to make the unpaid DEI work 
of countless members of our 
community (including graduate 
students) the responsibility of 
the University.

That 
means 
the 
bulk 

of the day-to-day work of 
implementing the DEI plans 
across campus must fall to 
the faculty and staff who have 
been given the responsibility 
of DEI plan implementation 
and who are paid for that 
work. At the same time, we 
also recognize the personal, 
professional and educational 
benefits that being involved 
with DEI work provides. I have 
personally 
benefitted 
from 

them throughout my career.

To address the issue of the 

appropriate role for graduate 
students 
within 
the 
DEI 

strategic 
planning 
process, 

my office is working with a 
task force equally comprised 
of graduate students and DEI 
strategic plan implementation 
professionals. The task force 
will have two charges.

First, the task force will 

go through all the unit DEI 
plans 
and 
identify 
where 

unpaid 
graduate 
student 

work may exist. The task 
force will then recommend 
appropriate ways to address 
this work (including providing 
appropriate 
compensation). 

The work needs to be tasks 
for which graduate students 
are uniquely qualified to do 
or it should be done by faculty 
or staff. The work also should 
have some educational benefit 
to graduate students since they 
came to the University to get 
the best education possible.

The 
second 
charge 
of 

the task force is to identify 
existing 
opportunities 

within the plans as well as 
recommend new mechanisms 

by which graduate students 
with interest in DEI issues 
can gain valuable educational 
and professional development 
experiences with appropriate 
compensation. 
Possible 

examples include: a new DEI 
innovation 
fund; 
possible 

new 
Rackham 
Graduate 

School Diversity Allies grant 
supplements; 
internship 

opportunities 
through 

the 
National 
Center 
for 

Institutional Diversity and the 
Office of Diversity, Equity & 
Inclusion; as well as potential 
educational 
opportunities 

in other units across the 
University.

I am confident that this 

task 
force 
provides 
the 

best process to address the 
shared concern that graduate 
students, 
particularly 

under-represented 
graduate 

students, 
should 
not 

be 
required 
to 
perform 

uncompensated work within 
the DEI plan. It is a process 
that will include graduate 
students in designing their 
roles in the DEI plan. We also 
anticipate creating additional 
funding for graduate students 
to work in concert with the 
DEI plan that will provide 
graduate students important 
educational benefits.

Ultimately, the University 

is interested in fostering a 
supportive relationship with 
graduate students that is both 
mindful of their time and 
respectful 
of 
their 
efforts. 

Through these outlined actions, 
we believe that together we can 
achieve these goals.

Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Monday, April 10, 2017

REBECCA LERNER

Managing Editor

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

EMMA KINERY

Editor in Chief

ANNA POLUMBO-LEVY 

and REBECCA TARNOPOL 

Editorial Page Editors

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board. 

All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

DEI work critical at the University

ROBERT SELLERS | OP-ED

Robert Sellers is the University of 

Michigan chief diversity officer and 

vice provost for equity and inclusion. 

He also is the Charles D. Moody 

Collegiate Professor of Psychology and 

a professor of education.

FRANNIE MILLER | CONTACT FRANNIE AT FRMILLER@UMICH.EDU

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Stephanie Trierweiler

FROM THE DAILY

We stand with our GSIs and GSSAs
T

he Graduate Employees’ Organization, the labor union that represents 
graduate student instructors and graduate student staff assistants 
at the University of Michigan, is in the process of negotiating a new 

contract for union members. GEO hopes the new contract will address issues 
of the rising cost of living in Ann Arbor, health care and diversity labor 
under the University’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion plan. The climate 
surrounding the negotiations has become more heated in recent weeks, with 
the union holding a number of protests, including a 400-person sit-in at the 
Fleming Administration Building. The Michigan Daily Editorial Board calls 
upon the University to support a contract that acknowledges the changes in 
cost of living and other benefit needs graduate students face since their last 
contract negotiation, and we implore the University to pay graduate students 
for diversity labor under their new contract. 

L

ast week, my best friends 
from home visited Ann 
Arbor because they have 

each 
dropped 
out 

of school to pursue 
music careers and, 
through a web of 
connections 
and 

mutual friends, they 
were 
given 
studio 

time in Detroit. So 
they 
would 
spend 

their days mostly in 
the city, and then 
come back here and 
hang out with me.

And while I was spending time 

with them, I realized, among other 
things, that I don’t feel very close 
to very many people in Ann Arbor. 
How could I? After all, I went to the 
same school from the time I was 3 
years old to when I graduated high 
school, so I’ve known many of 
the people who visited me for my 
entire waking life. Immediately 
once they arrived, the choice of 
whom to spend time with was 
abundantly 
clear: 
With 
my 

friends from home suddenly here, 
there was not really anybody else 
to be around.

And yet, I don’t think I saw as 

much of my friends from home 
as I could or as I wanted to. 
And this is because I do a lot of 
different things on this campus. 
I have two majors and a minor in 
three departments whose work 
and faculty members I respect 
enormously. I work with a lot of 
change-making 
organizations: 

the Prison Creative Arts Project, 
Students4Justice 
and 
the 

Program on Intergroup Relations, 
to name a few. I truly admire what 
these organizations stand for, and 
I am more than willing to help in 
any way I can.

In 
a 
Positive 
Psychology 

textbook referencing a 2002 
positive psychology study, the 
author notes that the investigators 
Ed Diener and Martin Seligman 
found that the most consistent, 
salient 
characteristic 
among 

people who scored the highest 
on a happiness survey was 
“their strong ties to friends 
and family and commitment to 
spending time with them.” This is 
something one of my friends from 
home pointed out to me while he 
was here.

And yet it’s something I’ve not 

thought about during my time 

at the University of Michigan. I 
think my way of understanding 
how to be happy at the University 

was to do the most 
things, to get most 
involved, as a means of 
leaving my mark on this 
campus as someone 
who tried to change all 
the fucked-up things 
that happen here.

Because, 
from 
its 

origins, this university 
is really unjust, both 
in its history and in 
the 
way 
in 
which 

the 
discourse 
surrounding 

that history takes shape, as the 
powerful 
Stumbling 
Blocks 

exhibit shows: This land was 
stolen from Native Americans, in 
part, with the understanding that 
Native children would be able to 
attend this school, and yet not a 
single Native American attended 
the 
University 
of 
Michigan 

during the next 130 years.

Today, at a school which is 

meant to represent the world 
in which we live and, I believe, 
the world in which we want 
to live, only 13.8 percent of 
the class of 2020 comes from 
underrepresented backgrounds. 
Despite these statistics, of course, 
the 
University 
brands 
itself 

as “Always Leading. Forever 
Valiant,” and it has made this 
year’s 
graduation 
ceremony 

one to explicitly celebrate the 
University’s history — fraught 
with discrimination — instead 
of inviting a dynamic speaker to 
help graduates construct a more 
egalitarian future.

The answer is not in celebrating 

our past. The answer is in 
interrogating our past relentlessly 
and brutally. Invite a Native 
American whose ancestors were 
lied to by University founders 
and administrators to speak to 
the class of 2017. Invite somebody 
whose ancestor was denied entry 
into this country by the Chinese 
Exclusion Act of 1892, drafted 
in part by former University 
President James Angell.

All of this — our past and the 

way we go about discussing it — 
is pathetic and inexcusable. And, 
as I type out these aspects of our 
University that I myself already 
know, I feel rancor boiling within 
me. I begin to look at students 
entering and exiting Mason Hall 

with this rancor attached to all 
of them, because I see them all 
as not doing anything about the 
deeply problematic aspects of 
this school. I see them only in the 
context of this; I see them as lazy, 
ungrateful, blind.

And so I work to change this 

campus by joining organizations. 
I will not become the blind, lazy 
idea of people that I sense all 
around me. But I’m not writing 
this just to say that. I’m writing 
to say that this work has not 
brought me happiness. My days 
are grossly routinized: wake 
up, 
homework, 
class, 
class, 

homework, 
meeting, 
dinner, 

sleep. I barely speak to people 
here — why would I, if I think of 
the average University student as 
complacent and fundamentally 
silent? I don’t laugh for extended 
periods of time here. “There is too 
much work to be done,” I think. 

Nor am I writing this to 

criticize the people in my life or 
the people on this campus. Not at 
all. I’m writing this as a certain 
diatribe against myself and the 
way in which I have lived on 
this campus. I have not worked 
to 
foster 
deep, 
long-lasting 

relationships. 
I 
have 
known 

people in meetings and lectures. I 
have not known people by taking 
walks with them and singing and 
dancing and playing Scrabble and 
Boggle with them.

Instead, I have seen people in 

this campus largely as products 
of this university’s history — 
the anger I feel toward the 
people around me, right now, 
just having recorded a few of 
the horrendous historic aspects 
of our University’s history — is 
proof of this. I am writing this, 
instead, to catalyze a shift in the 
way I see people here: not merely 
colleagues and peers, but people 
with stories and lives to share.

I’m reminded of a quote by 

the transcendent author Audre 
Lorde: “Caring for myself is 
not self-indulgence, it is self-
preservation.” I think I have 
somehow denied myself the 
ability 
of 
self-care, 
denied 

myself the time and space to 
create deep and long-lasting 
relationships, which are, I do 
believe, the key to happiness.

My lonely mind

ISAIAH ZEAVIN-MOSS | COLUMN

ISAIAH 

ZEAVIN-MOSS

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Letters should be fewer than 300 words while op-eds should be 550 
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Isaiah Zeavin-Moss can be reached 

at izeavinm@umich.edu.

