#ColumbiaGivingDay

Columbia Giving Day is a 24-hour, online fundraising event that allows alumni, parents, faculty, and students to contribute to various programs and initiatives for undergraduate and graduate students. This year's Giving Day is on Wednesday, October 20, 2021.

Columbia pays their graduate student workers $5,500 to $18,000 below an annual living wage in NYC. Yet, they raised enough money in the past 5 Giving Days alone, a 5-day work week, to fund the entire cost of our union's proposal to provide workers with a living wage and adequate healthcare for the next three years.

Despite the U.S. inflation rate up 5.4% from a year ago, the highest rate shift since 2008, Columbia chose to illegally freeze all graduate student compensation at last year's levels in retaliation for not accepting their offer of an average increase of 2.7%, only $1,023. That's less than the average gift to Columbia on Giving Day over the past five years, $1,145.

Without graduate student workers teaching undergraduates and conducting grant research, there will be no recitation sections, laboratory sections, office hours, or grant research completed, which will bring the educational and academic mission of the University to a halt. Please support Columbia student workers by donating here on Giving Day, Wednesday, October 20, 2021.