Penn State hosted a town hall Tuesday evening in the the Biobehavioral Health Building to give students a chance to discuss graduate student unionization with school provost Nick Jones and graduate school dean Regina Vasilatos-Younken.

After brief opening statements from the two on stage, the meeting opened up to a packed lecture hall and those watching on the live stream to ask questions.

Throughout the year-long process since the Coalition of Graduate Employees (CGE) filed for unionization, the university has voiced its displeasure with the idea of its graduate students unionizing, frequently repeating that it views them strictly as students and not employees.

When asked why the university has shown such strong opposition to unionization, Vasilatos-Younken stressed the individualistic nature of a graduate program compared to what she says a union can provide.

“Our primary concern is to preserve the unique aspects of graduate education, which are very, very different from other forms of education,” she said. “All of you who have already begun your graduate programs, you recognize how different it is from your undergraduate experience. It involves a very individual type of experience.”

After a hearing in September, the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board (PLRB) ruled that Penn State’s approximately 3,800 graduate students on traineeships and assistantships have the right to vote on unionization. The vote is tentatively set for mid-April.

Jones and Vasilatos-Younken said that nothing is finalized, but there will likely be different times and locations to vote during the week. As the information is finalized, students should also have answers to questions like “how to vote if they are out of town” on the election days.

Vasilatos-Younken added that the university is now stressing the position of voting-eligible graduate students educating themselves and making their voices heard because the decision will have an impact on all graduate students on traineeships and assistantships.

Should the students elect to create a union, all students, whether they are dues-paying members of the union or not, will be in the bargaining unit. Not paying dues to the union, she says, likely just leaves a graduate student without the ability to vote on matters that will still affect them.

When asked about what would happen in the case of a strike or how important factors like stipends change, the dean often relayed the same information: it depends based on how everything plays out.

Jones and Vasilatos-Younken were also asked about a study claiming that the presumed adverse effects of graduate employee unions are not as negative as they are made out to be. Vasilatos-Younken that the study is not applicable in relation to Penn State.

“It was based on survey data from the Chronicle of Higher Education back in the early 2000s. The total sample size was very small, about 516. Within that sample group, the number of fields, there were five fields sampled. Five. I want to tell you that we have 200 fields of study at Penn State,” she said

She also pointed out the lack of research assistants sampled in the study, as well as the fact that just two of the five fields sampled were STEM.

Vasilatos-Younken continued that reasoning for why Penn State is not comparable to other Big Ten schools with graduate assistant unions.

“[Big Ten graduate assistant unions] are predominantly or exclusively teaching assistants,” she said. “The situation [at Penn State], by virtue of what the hearing examiner of PLRB decided is almost unprecedented because it included all assistantships, no matter what the focus. The scale of our potential collective bargaining unit and the dominance of research assistants in STEM fields does not have a comparison in those schools.”

She said that Temple is a school with a graduate assistant union that compares, but said that the different metrics like stipends, health benefits, and tuition grants are superior at Penn State already without the union.

Jones alluded to the importance of the graduate student-advisor relationship several times throughout the evening, saying “the importance of the relationships that you all develop with your advisers is what makes this experience unique, it’s what makes it meaningful, and ultimately it is what will lead to your future success.”

He ended with a story of his own advisor as a graduate student himself, when his advisor talked with him late into the night to help him get through his struggles with graduate school. The story touched on the importance of that relationship, but the CGE response brings to light that not all experiences as graduate students are the same.

It's great that Provost Jones had a great relationship with his advisor and department, but sadly that's not the reality for many grad assistants. Hence, why a union is needed. #WeAreWorkers #YesCGE

— CGE at PSU (@cge_psu) March 13, 2018