UConn Graduate Assistants Rally for Higher Pay, Lower Fees

Graduate assistants at the University of Connecticut rallied Tuesday in Storrs, demanding the university freeze mandatory fees, raise stipends and strengthen protections for international students as contract negotiations continue.

Members of the Graduate Employees Union gathered outside the student union and marched across campus to the office of President Radenka Maric, where they delivered a petition signed by nearly 400 individuals and 43 labor groups and organizations. The action came amid ongoing collective bargaining talks between the union and university administration.

The union’s contract demands center on three main issues: fee relief, wage increases and expanded protections for international graduate assistants, a group facing particular uncertainty in the current federal immigration climate.

On fees, the union wants the university to freeze charges at 2026-27 levels and waive certain fees entirely. Under the administration’s most recent proposal, graduate assistants would pay at least $1,946 in fees, up $70 from the current academic year. Those fees cover a range of services, including general university, student health and wellness, technology, transit and graduate activities charges. Students at the Storrs campus pay $570 annually in the general university fee alone.

The union argues the math is straightforward and damaging. Fees have increased at three times the rate of stipends over the past four years. Graduate assistants earn between $28,500 and $33,500 per academic year in stipend income. The union estimates fees already eat up between 5.6% and 6.5% of that pay, and rising fees are wiping out whatever gains graduate assistants have made at the bargaining table.

Anika Agrawal, a PhD student studying natural resources and the environment and a member of the union’s bargaining team, put it plainly to fellow union members during the Tuesday rally. “A raise that disappears into new fees is not a raise,” Agrawal said.

Grace Easterly, the union president, echoed that point in a written statement. “In general, we’re simply asking that graduate assistants shouldn’t have to worry about paying rent or suffer from suddenly increasing fees that take back 6.56% of our paycheck,” Easterly wrote.

UConn spokesperson Stephanie Reitz declined to comment, citing the university’s standard practice of staying silent on negotiations while collective bargaining is ongoing.

Beyond the fee fight, the union is pressing for stronger safeguards for international graduate assistants. Those demands include establishing a dedicated legal support fund, guaranteeing 60 days of job security in the event of an emergency affecting an international worker and requiring the university to notify the union if it receives any inquiries about a graduate assistant’s immigration status. The union also wants UConn to commit to not sharing immigration information about any graduate assistant unless legally compelled to do so.

Those protections carry particular weight right now. International graduate students and researchers at universities across the country have faced growing anxiety over federal immigration enforcement actions in recent months. The union’s petition frames the issue as a matter of basic workplace rights.

Easterly’s written statement went further, arguing that the workers who teach and support students at a taxpayer-funded institution should not have to worry about safety, healthcare, housing, food or transportation costs regardless of immigration status.

UConn is not alone in facing pressure from graduate employee unions. Similar organizing efforts have played out at public universities across the Northeast in recent years, as graduate assistants push back against pay structures that haven’t kept pace with rising costs of living. In Storrs, where housing costs have climbed alongside the rest of New England, the economic squeeze on graduate student budgets is real.

What makes this particular moment notable is the combination of economic and immigration pressures hitting at the same time. The union is trying to hold two threads together in a single contract fight: the financial reality of making ends meet on a graduate stipend and the legal vulnerability of international workers who make up a significant portion of UConn’s graduate assistant workforce.

Bargaining continues. The university has not indicated when it expects to reach an agreement.