In the 2005 legislative session, the Virginia State Senate Budget amendments restricted state appropriations so that they can only be used to provide financial aid to in-state graduate students at Virginia colleges and universities. To try to halt this University Graduate Labor Union President Ethan Sribnick is working to voice the concerns of graduate students.
Sribnick mailed a letter today to Gov. Mark R. Warner articulating graduate student concerns and detailing reasons why the amendments to the 2005 budget would be detrimental to the University.
Sribnick said although he understands the reasoning behind the bill, he is concerned the amendments will harm the University.
"I think the reason for that is because people in the legislature wanted to have a commitment to education for Virginia students," Sribnick said. "Basically, I think it would destroy the University's reputation as a top-ranked research institution."
Sribnick said he appreciates the administration's support in protesting the amendments.
"We really want to commend the U.Va. administration for strengthening and protecting the University's commitment to graduate students, specifically through lobbying the General Assembly on our behalf," he said.
Graduate Student Council President Tom Bryan said the process of voicing graduate student concerns has been a long one.
"We first started contacting members of the General Assembly when we heard there was an effort in the House of Delegates and the Senate to limit appropriations to in-state grad students," Bryan said.
He said the amendments were passed in both the House of Delegates and the Senate last month.
"The letter was written because the governor still has time to make amendments to the bill," Bryan said.
As it stands, Bryan said half of the appropriated money from the state goes to support out-of-state graduate students.
"What the Senate said is that as of July 2005, all of this money should go to in-state students only," he said.
Bryan said restricting the funding is a problem because four-fifths of University students pursuing doctorate degrees are not from Virginia.
Bryan said the charter could be a concern with the new amendments.
"They added a requirement that state universities in the future would have to specify how much a tuition increase would support graduate students," Bryan said. "Our concern is that the legislature would balk at the idea that their constituents would have to pay more to support graduate and doctoral students who are out of state."
Bryan said graduate students are vital to the entire University.
"We are a big workforce at U.Va.," he said. "We need to recruit the best graduate students from across the country. By nature most of these students are going to be out of state. This is just going to hurt U.Va., that's just how academia works."
Bryan said he thinks increased tuition rates will become a controversy at the University as a result of the amendments.
"It's really more a question of what's going to happen because now the only way that the University can handle this is to increase tuition. That would be my concern," he said.
Vice President for Management and Budget Collette Sheehy said she still has hope that Warner will veto the amendment to limit state money to in-state graduate students.
"President Casteen has written the governor, and the Council of Presidents all wrote a letter," Sheehy said. "We'll see if the governor is going to amend that part of the bill."
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