Grad students hold sit-in to protest insurance cuts

Gone are the chanting and marching of last spring. \nNow, IU graduate-student employees are settling in for the long haul in their fight to get dental insurance and lower-cost health-insurance benefits.\nMembers of the Graduate Employees Organization held a sit-in protest Wednesday inside Bryan Hall, just a few feet away from the offices of the administrators whose attention they are seeking.\n"It's an ongoing problem, not something that can be resolved quickly," said graduate student Adrianne Wadewitz. "We're the only school in the Big Ten without dental coverage, and that's unfair."\nWhile the University does provide basic insurance for graduate employees, premiums for spouses and children are prohibitively expensive, they said. According to several signs the protesters were holding, a graduate instructor who teaches a class earns about $12,000 an academic year, while coverage for a spouse and one child costs up to $6,000.\n"It puts us in a bad position," Wadewitz said. "You can't have an uninsured child."\nSome students were angry that their premiums were raised even though they're getting the same basic coverage as before. Even though IU is paying almost 70 percent of the increase in premiums, grad students are paying about $180 more than last year.\n"They increased my fees again this year, and every time they raise fees that's less money I have for the semester," said Morgan Fritz, a graduate student at the protest.\nMany of the students at the protest felt that, as IU employees, they deserve full coverage.\n"We teach a lot of classes," Wadewitz said, "so if they didn't have us here, the University would basically shut down."\nFritz said the Graduate Employees Organization has contacted administrators repeatedly in an attempt to work out a compromise.\n"We've talked to (Neil Theobald, vice provost of budget and administration) a few times, but the only response we've gotten is, 'There's nothing we can do for you.'"\nTheobald said that decreases in state budget appropriations have made the 2006-07 budget very tight and that IU can't afford to pay for much more.\n"We wish we had more funds," Theobald told the IDS in late March. "It's just a very difficult year. We'd love to be able to do more... Graduate students are obviously a very high priority around here."\nThe insurance plan, which was revised last year, left many students feeling like they would get less benefits for more money. Some benefits were significantly reduced: Lifetime maximum benefits for a single diagnosis were cut in half from $500,000 to $250,000, a $5,000 limit was set for coverage of prescriptions purchased outside the IU Health Center, and co-pays for doctor visits were increased from $10 to $15, according to an April 28 IDS article.