A Critical Response To Our Current Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected America, particularly our country’s most vulnerable communities, notably the poor, working class, disabled, and Black and brown communities. Even before we found ourselves in a global health crisis, 87 million Americans found themselves without enough health insurance to cover their needs or entirely uninsured. The capitalist system has made health care a privilege accessible only to the wealthy, rather than a recognized necessity made available to all. 

Because most individuals in the country have employer-based health insurance, the unemployment crisis that has resulted from the pandemic has left tens of millions more without insurance or the funds they need to obtain medical care. No one should have to delay diagnosis or treatment of any medical issue as the coronavirus continues to spread. 

While we have long argued that access to medical care should always be enshrined as a human right, the coronavirus has made it clear to many that single-payer health care is a vital public health and safety concern. We could not have prevented this virus, but the lack of a universally-available health care system during this pandemic has cause incalculable but entirely avoidable harm.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal and Sen. Bernie Sanders have introduced the Health Care Emergency Guarantee (HCEG) Act, which seeks to mitigate the impact of this crisis by extending Medicare coverage to the uninsured and covering out-of-pocket health care costs for the duration of the pandemic. This will bridge the many gaps in our current health care system that have been so clearly highlighted by this crisis. While this is only a stepping stone on the path to Medicare For All, we believe that it takes necessary, immediate action to ensure every single person in the country, regardless of immigration status or income, has access to health care at a time when they need it most. 

A summary of the bill can be found here, and the full text is available here. 

Join Our Campaign For The HCEG Act

The time has come for us to organize and demand that the members of our government take action. One of the easiest ways for the individual to help the movement is by contacting your senators and representatives and urging them to offer their support to the Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act. We encourage you to write, email, or call their offices and demand that they take the necessary action to mitigate this crisis. This issue simply cannot wait. 

If you do not already know the names and contact information of your congresspeople, you can look them up here. Once you know where to reach them, you can:

• Write or email a version of this template letter to your congresspeople. Copy it word for word or personalize it to share more of your story and why the HCEG Act and Medicare For All are a priority to you. We know this pandemic and the lack of guaranteed health care affects us all in different ways.
• Call your senators and representatives at their office and let them know that you support the HCEG Act. Feel free to use this phone script or to advocate for health justice in your own words.

Remember, we are more powerful standing in solidarity together than any one of us can be alone. If we collectively raise our voices and put pressure on our elected representatives, we can compel them take the necessary steps to safeguard each and every person against the ravages of this pandemic. 

We will also be hosting a virtual phone bank on Tuesday, August 25th from 5-8pm. We will be calling on our neighbors in Snohomish County to join us in calling and writing their representatives to demand that they take these critical actions and extend healthcare coverage to all for the duration of the crisis. You can sign up to take part in the phone bank here.

If you’re looking for other ways to get involved, consider:

• Reach out to your congresspeople on Twitter and share your thoughts on this proposed legislation.
• Write letters to the editor at local newspapers and national publications, further publicizing the issue.
• Educate your friends, family, coworkers, and other members of your community on the importance of single-payer health care and the necessity of taking immediate action to prevent further unnecessary harm during this crisis.

Further Reading and Resources On Health Care During The Pandemic And The Necessity of Medicare For All

• Here’s How to Cover Uninsured Americans During the Pandemic (Politico)
• Big Problems Demand Big Solutions: Congress Must Expand Medicare Coverage to Everyone in America for the Duration of the Crisis (Labor For Single Payer)
• As Poll Shows Nearly 90% Democratic Support, Biden Told Hostility to Medicare for All ‘No Longer Tenable Position for You’ (Common Dreams)
• Improving the prognosis of health care in the USA (The Lancet)
• Joe Biden is Wrong About Single-Payer and Coronavirus (Jacobin)
• Keep Calm and Fight for Medicare for All (Jacobin)
• Our Public Health Infrastructure Is Losing a Fight With Capitalism (Jacobin)

You’re listening to Revolution Per Minute on listener sponsored WBAI in NYC broadcasting at 99.5 FM and streaming on your favorite podcast app. To connect with us after the show you can email us at revolutionsnyc@gmail.com. You can find us on our website revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com or on twitter @nycRPM

Boise DSA Contact: Alex Rinehart

Phone: (208) 481-4679
Email: alex.rinehart@protonmail.com

Pie Hole Workers Contact: Miles Ranck

Phone: (208) 353- 3022

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Boise DSA to Provide Solidarity Funding to Local Workers Protesting Unjust Treatment

Boise, Idaho, June 30, 2020--- Boise DSA, the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, voted unanimously to provide funding in support of protesting workers who were unjustly terminated at Pie Hole on Broadway. As members of the largest socialist organization in the United States, we support workers as they pursue a living wage and democratic controls in the workplace.

On June 24, 2020, the workers of Pie Hole Broadway made an official statement asking the business owners for a $3 essential worker raise and more decision making power. “As the impact of COVID-19 continues to hit our community, it is vital that our essential workers are justly compensated and receive fair treatment in the workplace” Alex Reinhart, Co-Chair of Boise DSA said Tuesday. “That is why we are supporting these workers.”

When the Pie Hole owners received the demands the workers were met with hostility. Instead of meeting to address the demands, the owners ordered the workers to train new hires. After refusing to train their obvious replacements, two-shift leads were fired and asked to leave the property. In a show of solidarity between the workers, the vast majority of Pie Hole employees voluntarily resigned.

We at Boise DSA are outraged at the Pie Hole owner's response. Reinhart explains “Every day, workers sell their time and effort to create the things we need to live and thrive. Now more than ever, it is clear that the blood, sweat, and tears of those who prepare our food are essential to our community and that the value of their work is far higher than what the market-determined.”

After being unjustly fired, Pie Hole workers are now demanding to be rehired and the meeting of original demands to occur with the owners. We at Boise DSA stand firmly with these workers and our unanimous vote to provide solidarity funding to the Pie Hole workers is just one step of many we are willing to take. We support the workers of Pie Hole Broadway as they demand what is due to them as workers and as human beings: economic and social democracy.

We are proud of Boise DSA and Red Republican faction members involved in the organizing process. Socialists will always be at the forefront of the class struggle. We encourage everyone to donate to their solidarity fund: https://donorbox.org/worker-solidarity

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dsa_pie-hole-press-release.pdf

Last week, Burlington acting Chief of Police, Jon Murad, was allowed to address a 1,000-person Black Lives Matter rally in Burlington. Faced with pressure from hundreds of residents at public hearings demanding the City defund the police and remove 30% of cops from the street, Murad gave a skillful, liberal defense of expansive policing and the large budgets this requires. The affect of this was not exactly clear (he wasn’t booed off the stage), but the message did conflict with popular chants to abolish the police later on the march.

VTDigger published an instructive profile on Murad. You can read that here. It is an expose on how the Chief of Police, and policing itself, are tied in multiple ways in net of business, racism, and militarism.

As Alex Vitale demonstrates in The End of Policing, police are an armed apparatus of an economy based on profit and class division, needed to oppress, exploit, and subjugate, especially people of color. Modern policing grew from several strands of ruling class violence: colonial occupations, strike breaking, suppressing working class protest, and slave patrols. Capitalism requires this in order to protect huge class inequality and sustain the flow of profits. Policing is centrally about racism, militarism, and defending the power of capital over our labor, our lives, and our planet.

In Murad’s biography, many of the institutional connections underpinning modern policing are clear: he completed 2 degrees at a ruling class university (Harvard), worked as a security consultant for banks and other large corporations, identifies with the military and U.S. imperialism, demonstrates a long-term commitment to policing propaganda, and had a quickly advancing career with the NYPD under the infamous police commissioner William Bratton.

Bratton is the best known advocate of broken windows policing, an invasive and racialized form of social control that urban police departments around the world have adopted, several under Bratton’s personal direction. Bratton, a Democratic, also emphasizes the importance of public relations, spinning the most egregious practices and results from broken windows and stop-and-frisk risk to insulate the legitimacy of policing from justified criticism and attempts to defund.

Bratton was also a mentor of Burlington’s former Police Chief Brandon del Pozo. Del Pozo was forced out after a presiding over police killings and violent attacks on Black residents, plus police harassment of civil rights activists. During his tenure del Pozo claimed an unlimited appetite for more cops to do social good, embracing the liberal hope that police can be a progressive social force. This also goes along with racially diversifying policing, which both Murad and Bratton promote, but which research show has little to no effect on out-of-control police violence and killing.

As Vitale documents, the invasive “community” policing Murad did in New York housing projects is exactly what the anti-racist movement for police defunding, against mass incarceration, and for abolition points to as the problem.

The multiracial rebellion for Black lives and the thousands in Burlington who have rallied and testified and protested have successfully put defunding police and firing violent and abusive cops on the public agenda for next year's budget. But on the other hand, it's also the case that policing has support from the sectors of real estate, retail, banking and finance, military industrial complex, Democratic Party, Republican Party, major media and the highly motivated police and military associations.

Unfortunately, some groups that should be on our side are not. While several unions and union federations have sided with the movement for Black lives, the Vermont State Employees Association (VSEA) executive director, Steve Howard, has sided with policing and retaining cops in unions. Pro-police union bureaucrats, along with the economic and political rulers, all hope, not without some basis, to ride out the moment with delay, redirection, scare tactics, and cosmetic reforms. They will not willingly work to undermine the policing that helps maintain the existing system of racial injustice and class inequality.

A key question is how can we continue to escalate and strategically expand the brilliant and inspiring protest movement that has got us this far. The current level of protest and lobbying pressure on the Mayor and City Council has forced some recognition of the problem. But it may not be enough given the powerful forces arrayed against police defunding.

Kristin Jordan, aka KRJ, is a poet and activist in the Harlem community, where she has started an independent publishing company that focuses on Black and Latino literary activists. She is a member of DSA and is the Social Justice Chair for United Methodist Women at Salem Church, as well as being an active Buddhist. KRJ shares with us her years of experience in the Black Lives Matter and police accountability movements, and what opportunities and challenges she sees in the current wave of activism. She also talks about how her Christian and Buddhist practices complement each other, and about attending an event to support women candidates, only to discover that the candidate that should come forward was her! Now, KRJ is aiming to take her activism to City Hall as a candidate for New York City Council. Enjoy this conversation, and for more information check out https://kristinforharlem.com/

Support for Urooj Rahman: https://fundrazr.com/71fsC0?ref=sh_09Ftc6_ab_5z27OP7I9s75z27OP7I9s7

https://www.cunyclear.org/ Twitter: @CUNY_CLEAR

DSAForTheMany is @nycDSA's Multi-Candidate slate for state offices. The endorsed candidates are Jabari Brisport, Julia Salazar, Marcela Mitaynes, Phara Souffrant Forrest, & Zohran Mamdani.

For federal races NYC DSA has endorsed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Samelys Lopez while Lower Hudson Valley DSA has endorsed Jamaal Bowman. 

Polls stay open until 9pm. If you haven’t voted yet and feel safe heading to the polls, make sure your vote is counted. If you’re having issues at the polls or questions about voting please call 866-700-5927. 

Since the conclusion of the Eugene Mayoral race, a candidate previously endorsed by Eugene DSA expressed “pride” in an attraction to adolescent children. We unequivocally condemn these comments, and urge any person with these interests not to seek office, but rather to seek help so that they may protect their fellow community members.

–Eugene DSA Coordinating Committee

Darcel Clark should not be on the BC Board of Trustees. Her record as Bronx District Attorney is incredibly disturbing, from the egregious conduct of her office withholding exculpatory evidence while attempting to prosecute people like Pedro Hernandez, Otis Smith, and Walliris Velez to her role in the Kalief Browder case. Her recent decision not to press charges against anyone in connection with the death of Layleen Polanco reaffirms our position. Layleen Polanco was an Afro-Latina transgender woman who died in Rikers due to complications related to epilepsy in June of 2019. On June 5th of this year Clark announced she would not be pressing any charges against guards or staff at the prison. In her original release Clark included Layleen’s deadname. Just one week later NBC released surveillance video showing staff at the prison failing to attend to Polanco for an hour and a half, despite knocking on her door and seeing that she was unresponsive. Polanco was in solitary confinement despite the prison and prison doctors being aware of her epilepsy. When guards finally entered the cell they could be seen laughing. Polanco was in prison because she could not pay her $500 bail. Her case is sadly another example of the criminalization of transgender women and vulnerable communities through over policing and criminalization of poverty. The failure to care for Polanco while she was imprisoned and Clark’s decision not to press charges exemplify the disregard the criminal justice system has for transgender lives. YDS of BC once again calls for Clark to be removed from the BC board of trustees.

Sign the petition to remove Clark from the BC Board of Trustees here.

How Can Educators Stop Unsafe Openings? Lessons from the Red State Revolt

As President Trump pushes to open schools as if COVID-19 were under control, and Governor Little cuts Idaho’s education budget by $99 million (with more austerity certain to come), let’s look to West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona, where teachers found that striking was possibly their only tool to fight for the welfare of themselves, their students, and their communities.

Former teacher, labor organizer, journalist and DSA member Eric Blanc will join us to discuss how the collective action of Idaho educators could stop unsafe openings of schools.

RSVP at:

https://actionnetwork.org/events/dsa-night-school-how-can-educators-stop-unsafe-openings-lessons-from-the-red-state-revolt

By Trenten Ingell and Joshua Sodicoff

You — and thirty thousand of your peers — are getting shafted by the University of Michigan, the leaders and best… go blue! Our fair-enough university boasted on the flyers you read as a prospective student, the banners that line campus, and many other methods of communication we receive about its immense power. It holds an endowment equivalent to the yearly expenditures of the government of Jordan, the largest stadium in the United States, and many of the top academic departments in the world. If it’s so great, and surely any representative of the University would agree, then why have they failed in supporting students beyond their most basic responsibility during the COVID-19 crisis? From the few weeks preceding spring break through now, the University has dealt with the needs of undergraduates strictly on the basis of necessity and not of humanity. In the process, they’ve failed to account for the nuances of these issues and have created new, unforeseen problems. From the very beginning of this crisis, these systemic failures have stood out to us. That is why we’re trying to organize students and other stakeholders in our community to speak out against our administration and the lack of accountability that’s led us to our current situation.

We want to acknowledge that we understand and accept that many of the actions that the University has taken during the current pandemic were necessary from a public health perspective. Do we miss our friends, having places to be, and Ann Arbor? Of course. But we’re realistic, and we know that an open campus during a global pandemic would only lead to disaster. That being said, at almost every point the University made one of these critical COVID-19 decisions, they botched it. Because of their inability to act, they have cost students their time, money, mental health, and for some, their ability to return home.

Do you remember how the University chose to cancel classes three days after the end of spring break? Other universities, also on break, gave students fair warning so that they didn’t have to engage in unnecessary, costly and potentially hazardous travel. But ours cancelled after we came back from break, some of us traveling across or even out of the country. It was only predictable that some of us would return to Ann Arbor with COVID-19. In addition to their delay in cancelling classes, the University gave no other information on how operations would proceed. Students were left in the dark about important decisions and left to react to them day-by-day. Surely, managing a crisis is difficult. But how did administrators not give credence to the impact of leaving a student body the size of a city in the dark? In travel costs alone, the University cost its student body hundreds of thousands dollars. This number is especially large when you consider that a strong majority of University of Michigan students are in-state.

Far more grievous was university housing’s actions to reduce the population density of on-campus living. What started with a series of emails pleading for students to move escalated to a notice that all students without a sufficient reason for staying on-campus would have to leave as early as March 17th. This was just three days before Governor Whitmer signed a statewide moratorium on evictions. The language in this email suggested students would lose keycard access the following morning if action was not taken. Only after the deadline set out in the email was any clarification given on the policy. Clarification that did nothing to mitigate fears that the University continued to hold the power to forcibly remove students from their rooms. The power structure in tenantship at the University implied that resistance was futile, and so the University conducted mass evictions.

Meanwhile, while universities across the country announced housing refund policies as part of a coherent COVID-19 response plan, the University remained silent on this issue until March 20th. Administration wondered why students remained in their prepaid housing when no guarantee of compensation for leaving was made. Housing’s decision to offer a measly $1,200 refund for half a semester of rent, utilities, and dining was a slap in the face to students who pay astronomical costs for these services. Room and board is, on average, $12,000 a year. We were told to leave campus right after spring break, halfway through the semester, equating to three thousand dollars in lost costs. Meanwhile, $1,200 is what we would have received if we were eligible for federal relief checks (another topic we could wax poetic on). Americans agree that this check wasn’t enough to make up for lost wages, and for University students who did not budget for the costs associated with providing for themselves, it goes much less far. Furthermore, upon cursory research, we found that the University’s disruption of services clause in the Community Living at Michigan document calls for a proportional refund in the event that Housing is unable to fulfill its obligations, like providing food or rent. In every sense, residents of university housing were shortchanged, and the continued lack of proportional reimbursement remains a gross violation of the University’s own policy.

The University’s best claim to an adequate response — its rapid transition to online coursework — also failed large swaths of students. Yes, some professors developed a strategy for continuing to provide coursework. Between us, we had great-to-fair experiences with the transition online but this is not the overwhelming response. Some courses that could have moved lectures and discussions online with enough thought simply reduced their requirements to short weekly assignments. Labs and other hands-on courses lost most, if not all, of their value. There was never any sign that departments were monitoring the continuity of coursework. When professors knew no one was watching, many chose to do the bare minimum. But still, with access to our course evaluations and Canvas pages, the University will pretend it did enough because we have the credits from this semester on our transcript. We know that this accomplishment is incomparable to the same of any other semester. When we come back, students will pay for the gap between expectations of their online learning experience and the reality of severely diminished outcomes from the change in environment and learning style. Whether this includes students being unprepared for further coursework from less attentive prerequisites or students abandoning tracts of coursework entirely from a department’s response to online classes, we will figure out soon enough

Of course, as we navigate through the pandemic, we will share our personal journey to fight against the University. From the very beginning of the crisis, when the University refused to publicly announce if a proportional refund would be offered as it pressured students to leave university housing, the both of us thought it was important to rally student voices against the failures of the administration. We started with a petition to request the University follow the stated policy of prorating services not rendered with respect to housing and dining — a fight that has since evolved into collaboration on research and representation for a class action lawsuit against the University. During this endeavor, we learned more about the scale and variety of problems that our peers were facing, from unresponsiveness of departments beyond housing to dissatisfaction with online coursework. We felt uncomfortable stopping our efforts at an issue that was close to us as former university housing residents when we saw that all of our peers were, in some way or another, receiving unjust treatment.

In the process of developing our requested response, we attempted to reach out to diverse voices in our community. The first step of this was the creation, and subsequent distribution, of a Google Form with questions about student priorities. It also provided space to describe what elements of crisis response students found most important. We saw that students overwhelmingly supported a proportional refund for aspects of the winter term, a reduction in tuition for the spring, summer, and fall terms, and greater transparency in decision-making. With data and additional suggestions from this form, we reached out to a GroupMe we had made for students interested in supporting a fuller response from the University for help in writing a document detailing our rationale and our finalized list of demands. We also reached out to the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO), a union representing graduate student instructors and student staff assistants at the University. Recently, GEO successfully negotiated a new contract despite the pandemic. We sought their input on issues of strategy and for feedback on our draft demands. Ultimately, we settled on the following:

1. A 50% discount for tuition and fees for the Spring, Spring/Summer, and Summer 2020 terms, a 25% tuition discount for the Fall 2020 terms, with an additional 25% discount in the event that classes continue in an online format.
2. A pro-rata refund, retroactively effective March 12th for room and board, tuition, and fees for the Winter 2020 term.
3. Subsidies for rent payments for students living off campus, and university assistance in terminating leases in the event that classes continue in an online format in the Fall.
4. Additional academic resources, including additional tutoring and make-ups for lab courses, meant to compensate for the decrease in quality of the second half of the Winter 2020 term.
5. A 50% reduction in expenditures toward executive officers and service units as well as a half reduction in utility costs passed on to students as a means of partially offsetting these demands.

Instead of helping students negotiate with landlords, the University ardently pressured students to leave. Instead of providing further financial assistance to its students during a turbulent economic period, the University and its administration ranted about its own supposed financial struggles in an attempt to explain why it was unable to address even the most basic of student concerns. The dust has settled now, and we want to address the glaring flaws in the University of Michigan’s response to COVID-19 through these demands.

The primary criticism of these demands has been the associated numbers. Originally, we tried to conduct research into university financials to develop a full picture of where tuition goes and what costs might be lower under the current circumstances. We quickly found a bit of opacity with cash flows beyond the department level, making it difficult to back up any decisions we made. Instead, we decided to err on the side of requesting more than we expected to receive. In the event that we negotiate with the University, compromise is to be expected. So why start with a weak position?

Our current issues revolve now around tackling the repressive set of policies and bureaucracy that the current university administration has established. The existing structure of our university does not allow the students to have any voice in discretionary spending or crisis-related decisions, and because of that the University has been unable to understand or react to student needs as they come. If the University wants to exert its institutional authority over us as students, so be it. But this should at least be done with some effort to buttress the social safety net of the student body at large. They have these investments and liquid assets to use. They are, as an institution of learning, tasked with promoting a quality education and charming college atmosphere which we have all likely come to appreciate in our academic careers. Not only has the University failed to provide the basic service of a safe and secure environment for its students, it has robbed many of those students the financial safety net that has yet to be provided by any state or federal institution.

We have to be clear about what the consequences of a poor long-term response from the University may be. Already, the University is counting on a net outflow of students due to an unwillingness to pay full price for an inferior semester. In response, they admitted 500 more freshmen than originally intended. Students will transfer out, take gap years, or in some cases end their college careers entirely. As the economic outcome of the pandemic becomes more clear, we think that a higher proportion of students than originally accounted for will take one of these paths. Students already taking off and unable to pay tuition are unlikely to return. For the University, this will mean lower revenue far beyond just the Fall semester. Some students will likely attempt to bridge this difference with loans, a risky choice to make in the midst of a growing national college debt crisis and in one of the worst economies of the last hundred years. For many, this choice will surmount to indentured servitude to lenders for years. Because students will return, whenever that may be, with a shallow understanding of content they were supposed to have learned this semester, they are more likely to perform below standards that have yet to be addressed by anyone at the University. This is a perfect storm of negative factors, leading to a student body depressed in all senses of the word at the most crucial time in their development. We will have the burden of a crisis completely outside of our control on our backs for the rest of our lives. From an organizational standpoint, this is also very bad for a university that prides itself on its alumni network and extensively solicits donations from its graduates. If it means anything to you, reader, we promise to complain about the response to anyone who asks about our thoughts on the University after we graduate…

We have been led to believe as students that the University has an abundance of resources available to students on and off campus. The list goes on of the great facilities, departments, and amenities of living. It leaves a bitter and unsavory taste in our mouths as we are told by this same university that it is now unable to provide the necessary financial support to its students through this crisis, and that it has somehow lost all ability to forgive tuition and housing payments, or spare even a single cent on lowering tuition for the upcoming term. They have led us to believe that the University will hemorrhage from the effects of COVID-19 and they will need to make cuts in how much they are able to provide to students during this time. This is one of the greatest fabrications the University has engineered. We understand that it is not as simple as breaking open the piggy bank of a multibillion dollar endowment; it is a reallocation of assets and a change in policy that accommodates the circumstances of the current pandemic. What would you estimate the University’s current assets sum to, in total? I guarantee you, you will underestimate the bloated behemoth that is the account book of any institution of higher education. As we begin to imagine this staggering amount of accumulated assets, we must consider what is necessary for an institution of learning to guarantee for its students.

The choices administrators have made so far have had severe material consequences for their students. And the inaction of our University has set a precedent for institutions of learning to pass on their financial liabilities to their student body. As we aim to unionize and negotiate a fair deal for students, we ask you, the reader, to consider for yourself the consequences of a silent and apathetic student body during this crisis.

We have reached out to dozens of orgs other than YDSA at the University of Michigan, our sole organizational sponsor, and we have yet to receive a single response. We assume that org leadership naturally doesn’t want to invoke the wrath of the University on their funding and relationships to the wider community. But because we now have a system where students are being seriously harmed, we must act. If we as a student body do not voice our dissent of the current university policy, we will be robbed once again and will have no one but ourselves to blame. Ignoring this opportunity to engage with the system endangers both your own and your fellow classmates’ financial security. You have nothing but the time and ability to spread this discourse of a fair deal for students, but we perhaps naively have expected this out of the student body, the supposed leaders and best that Michigan has to offer.

We implore you to consider once again what your interests are as a student. As someone who is currently paying for housing and tuition, ask yourself some questions. Do I think the Board of Regents has my best interest at heart? How can I expect a fair deal from the University’s administration who continue to act in the self-interest of the University’s capital interests, and have been nothing but antagonistic to the housing and academic needs of its students? If I can’t expect any form of refund or financial aid during this time, what is it that I can do to help myself and my fellow Wolverines?

Well, we are here to answer that last question! As representatives of Students for a Fair and Transparent COVID-19 Response, we are here to demand the University answers the needs of its students before the Board of Regents make budgetary decisions for this upcoming Fall term. It is imperative that we are proactive during this crisis, and that we can unify as a student body to pressure the University to listen. We have many avenues through which we intend to organize, such as tuition strikes, threats of mass-disenrollment, and media outreach. Feel free to ask us questions or give us feedback at either of our emails, ingellt@umich.edu and sodicoff@umich.edu. If you have a problem that you have faced because of the University’s response to COVID-19, we want to know and we want to help! This struggle is ours to solve in concert, to understand our rights as students during this time, and to set precedent for the University to respond fairly to our needs during times of crisis.

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Of Pandemics and Academics: How the University of Michigan Robbed 30,000 Students was originally published in The Michigan Specter on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.