The healthy choice

It seems like each time IU graduate students reach out for logical benefits from the University, the University never responds in kind. \nTwo weeks ago, IU turned down a common sense request by graduate students for the inclusion of dental insurance in their health plans -- a decision that this editorial board called "terribly short-sighted" that means we'll remain one of the two schools in the Big Ten that won't provide grad students with dental benefits. (Penn State is the other.)\nAnd now, according to an article Monday in the Indiana Daily Student, insurance woes are continuing for our graduate students, but we must shake some windows and rattle some walls.\nCurrently, IU only insures its student academic appointees. While it doesn't cover appointees' dependents, spouses and children can buy into the program. So far, everything seems OK. But here's where the wheels fall off the cart. The University is proposing a $584 increase in the cost of graduate students' health insurance premiums. That's a pretty startling increase of 58 percent. Furthermore, the cost of insuring a graduate student's spouse could increase almost $1,400 and insuring a child could go up roughly another $1,000. Overall, insuring a family could end up costing grad students disproportionately when their stipends only range from $9,000 to $12,000.\nThat's a lot of numbers and dollar signs, but the essence is that it could get a lot harder for graduate students to make ends meet when it comes to their families' health insurance. And that's unfortunate on many levels.\nFor starters, it runs completely contradictory to our mission to increase our status as a research university. Our graduate students perform vital work in the fields of research and on behalf of professors and undergraduates. Luring the best and the brightest isn't a cheap thing to do in the short term, but the possible rewards -- larger grants, more qualified students, prestige and renown -- pay back for a difficult immediate investment. Increasing benefits for families also puts an unfair pinch on international graduate students, many of whom bring their loved ones with them to Bloomington to pursue academic interests.\nThe good news is that the raising cost of insurance premiums isn't a done deal. Right now, they're only preliminary and will go through the process of review before becoming permanent. It's up to us, undergraduate and graduate students alike, to lobby seriously for a plan that's really in IU's best interest. It's responsible to cover primarily the student, but it's also responsible to offer assistance to cover the student's loved ones for the benefit of IU as a whole.\nThe cost is now or later. Either we're spending a little more now to insure our graduate students and reap the benefits as they succeed, or we're spending a lot more in the future to make the Bloomington campus seem appealing again for graduate students who instead join up with universities where they receive better benefits. \nThe decision is ultimately IU's alone. As it stands, they're on track to make the wrong one.