Hardship Fund updates
Dear comrades,
We are writing to you with some Hardship Fund updates. We have achieved so much together as a union, yet uncertainties remain. It is important for us to acknowledge the emotional and material hardship these uncertainties bring - it is both a happy and stressful time.
There are many important updates so please read through the end:
Round 5 of the hardship fund is still open until January 10th 11:59 pm. All student workers who withheld labor from Jan 2-Jan 7 are eligible to submit applications to this round. Due to the uncertainty in the back pay schedule this will be a regular round, and we will allocate the money according to our regular criteria. A link to the application can be found here.
Registration holds due to outstanding debt to Columbia were supposed to be lifted on January 7th. If they were not lifted for you we recommend that you call the registrar office (212-854-4400). People reported that after calling/emailing (sometimes several times), demanding to speak to someone that can help them, the hold was lifted.
Once your hold is lifted make sure to register to the appropriate residency unit and courses in your first registration appointment!
If there is an urgent problem or you call and cannot get your registration hold lifted, please contact us as soon as possible: gwchardshipfund@gmail.com
Late fees - The Hardship Fund Committee has set aside $10k (starting limit of $300 per person) to cover late fees accrued through rent striking and/or inability to pay the $2k “loan” CU provided after changing our payment schedules. In many cases late fees have not been applied yet, but others might already be seeing them on SSOL.
If you have a late fee, the first step is to call GSAS Financial Aid [(212) 854-3808] and urge them to cancel it. We know from experience that with enough persistence they cancel them. First, call financial aid and be clear that you know that the office has the authority to lift the fee (they will often try to refer you to the original office that charged the fee, don’t let them). If necessary, you can also call the Director of Financial Aid, Tom Tarduogno [(212) 854-3809)]. For people in the Humanities and Social Sciences, we have found that the school representative Sandra Peters is an incredibly unhelpful person, so we recommend going straight to the director.
Some people have already applied for late fees in previous rounds. If you did so, but in the end were not charged, you can re-donate the money to the hardship fund (see point 5 for further instructions).
Ongoing efforts of expanding the fund - we’re constantly working on ways to expand the hardship fund. In the upcoming days we will launch The Other Union Shop, our merchandise e-shop for SWC and pro-union gear! Stay tuned for more exciting projects and do let us know if you have any ideas on ways to fundraise or designs for merch.
Even though we have a tentative agreement, until the uncertainties clear up we need to continue supporting our members. Please keep encouraging the people around you to donate to our Open Collective.
Back pay and mutual aid - the technicalities of back work are still not clear. We hope it will be clarified in the upcoming days. Once this happens we will send an update regarding support for those who are having problems with back work/back pay.
Moving forward, the hardship fund will continue to support student workers primarily through mutual aid. We know back pay is a big cause of anxiety for members of our unit, and while we hope departments commit to making up all lost wages, we are preparing for the event that some may not, alongside possible technical problems or delays. Let’s make sure resources make it to everyone in our unit, particularly the most vulnerable people.
If you are in the position to donate to the hardship fund we welcome it. If you do receive pay for back work and lost wages and receive support from the hardship fund during the strike, we encourage you to re-donate what you are able, when you are able. We also encourage unit members who were off strike (on a fellowship year, etc) to donate according to their abilities. Further information about members' (re)donations to the hardship fund will be sent in the upcoming days. Please do not (re-)donate if you cannot afford to! We will be sending out a worksheet soon to help individuals interested in supporting their comrades calculate whether or not they are able to donate and, if so, how much.
If you received funds from the hardship fund you are now able to re-donate, please send them back to your original disburser. If you want to make a new donation, please email gwchardshipfund@gmail.com for Venmo, PayPal, or Zelle info of one of our disbursers. (Directly donating to a disburser allows us to circumvent OpenCollective’s processing fees.)
UAW strike pay if you haven’t received all of your UAW strike pay please reach out to your department organizer or email us at gwchardshipfund@gmail.com. And of course get in touch with other questions too!
In solidarity,
SWC Hardship Fund Committee