Graduate students and members of the United Campus Workers stood underneath the clock tower behind a mini cooler full of lemonade on Thursday as part of a drive that hopes to quench students’ thirst for affordable healthcare.
The University of Memphis branch of United Campus Workers, Tennessee’s higher education union, held the lemonade stand in conjunction with the NAACP’s Moral Week of Action Campaign, hoping to raise awareness of the lack of affordable health care provided to graduate assistants by the University.
Students lined up in front of the UCW’s stand, signing petitions and donating money for a glass of lemonade to support a campaign geared towards healthcare issues concerning graduate assistants.
“Everyone deserves health insurance,” junior social work major Raven Ates said.
Ates signed the petition because she believes everyone deserves to be healthy.
Many graduate assistants have problems finding health insurance, citing the expense of individual healthcare plans, costs which go up when spouses and children are added into the mix. Furthermore, because of the time constraints and pressures placed on them, many are unable to find work that provides healthcare benefits. Currently, The University does not offer health insurance to graduate assistants that do not make enough money to meet the income requirements for it.
Doctoral student Josh Dohmen, one of the key organizers of the lemonade stand, believes graduate assistants should be offered insurance as part of their stipends regardless of their income.
“They (the administrators) on campus in the graduates school say there is not enough money in the U of M pool of funds to offer equal health insurance opportunities,” Dohmen said. “The state should expand its Medicaid program and that it should not be based on income alone.”
In a letter to the editor Dohmen wrote that ran in The Daily Helmsman last spring, he explained that the health insurance plan available to students cost between 9 and 23 percent of the gross stipend of a graduate assistant. Further complicating matters, as Tennessee refused to accept the expansion of Medicaid, many graduate assistants are now in an income bracket that receives no government healthcare assistance. This leaves them with three options for healthcare. They could pay for a cheaper, less-useful health insurance plan that may not cover everything they need. They could pay for a less expensive catastrophic plan that only covers “essential health benefits” such as emergency services, hospitalization and prescription drugs and is only available to people under 30. Or they could simply pay the fine.
“The University offers health insurance to eligible positions, usually defined as a regular (not temporary) employee hired for at least 6 months in uniquely budgeted position,” Amanda Clarkson, Director of the University Benefits Administration Department, said. “With the ACA law, beginning in January 2015 we will offer health insurance to any employee who meets the Affordable Care Act guidelines as a full time employee – working at least 30 hours per week over a defined measurement period.”
The drive started at 10 a.m. and ended around 2 p.m. with almost 50 names on the petition.
Lorena De Frias, a graduate student of philosophy at the University, signed the petition because “It’s important for students to feel supported by their university.”
Although the students only raised $34.15, Dohmen believes the lemonade stand did a good job of further raising awareness of the problem.
“It’s not about how much money we raise,” Dohmen said. “But rather more importantly to raise awareness.”
