Image caption: Long lines at Stanford's February 13, 2023 food pantry

[Note: Please include your department and affiliation in the “Last Name” section of the petition when you sign. For example: Jane Stanford, PhD, English] 

To President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Provost Persis Drell, and Vice Provost Stacey Bent, 

We, graduate students at Stanford, are experiencing an unprecedented affordability crisis. Rapid economic changes in the Bay Area; skyrocketing inflation and on-campus housing costs; and three consecutive years of pay cuts to Ph.D. students’ salaries have led to a student body that loses purchasing power every year and slips ever closer to Santa Clara County’s “Extremely Low Income” threshold.

Faced with increasingly dire straits, initial data (as of February 2023) garnered from 45% of Ph.D. students by Stanford’s Office of Institutional Research and Decision Support (IR&DS) highlights the extreme situation, as evidenced by findings such as: 

• 74% of Ph.D. students experience financial stress.
  • 15% report that their financial situation significantly disrupted their Ph.D. progress.
  • 11% seriously considered taking a leave of absence.
• 33% of Ph.D. students work at least one additional job beyond their full-time research and teaching responsibilities.
  • 17% report that this extra work was needed to fund their basic needs.
  • 14% work more than 11 hours/week at these additional job(s).
• 35% of Ph.D. students forgo mental, dental, or vision care because Stanford’s health insurance does not cover it and they cannot afford it.
• 22% of Ph.D. students face food insecurity.

Years of inaction from Stanford leadership on student needs have pushed the campus to its breaking point. A February 8, 2023 article from the San Francisco Chronicle highlights the many concurrent challenges that students face at Stanford, ranging from poor mental health support to continued intolerance on campus.

Yet, despite the many crises documented in the Graduate Student Council’s (GSC) Bill on Affordability, the IR&DS Expenses Survey, and the San Francisco Chronicle article, Stanford has continued to put its own interests over student needs. Consider three current examples:

• Despite the GSC’s numerous reasonable recommendations articulated in the Bill on Affordability over five months ago, Stanford's leaders, especially Provost Drell and Vice Provost Bent, have not implemented a single recommendation.
• Despite Stanford’s public documentation that graduate student expenses for 2022-2023 total at least $49,514 (for a domestic, funded student who lives on campus with no dependents), leaders set 2022-2023 minimum salaries below their own estimate of our expenses ($48,216). Furthermore, our graduate student salaries have not kept pace with inflation for three years consecutively, widening the gap between our expenses and our wages.
• Despite the Vice Provost’s written assurance that student leaders would be consulted in the key decision-making process of setting salaries for the upcoming year, students were not consulted or even notified regarding the timeline of these conversations. The GSC was told 48 hours after it was announced across the university – far too late to be able to advocate or respond. 

This year alone, the GSC and student leaders across campus have spent hundreds of hours trying to engage university leaders and advocating for changes that would improve graduate students’ lives – hours that should have gone to furthering our education and research. Stanford leaders have ignored these good faith efforts, delaying real change another year. 

Our needs are too urgent to wait any longer. 

In response to the administration’s neglect of student needs and voices, the GSC took a historic Vote of No Confidence in Stanford’s leadership, particularly the Provost and Vice Provost of Graduate Education. However, this vote alone will not push the university to act. We need to stand together in calling for our university to see us and meet our needs. 

Therefore, we, the undersigned, demand that Provost Drell and Vice Provost Bent take the following actions by March 1, 2023. 

1. Raise graduate student 2023-2024 salaries at least 10% above the 2022-2023 minimum assistantship salary;
2. Publicly report all information and calculations used in the determination of the 2023-2024 minimum salary adjustment, historical minimum adjustments from 2018 to the present, and every year going forward;
3. Reinstate the Marguerite bus lines – the Shopping Express and the N&O – to their full, pre-pandemic capacity, as they provide students with access to basic needs and enable them to move around campus safely at night;
4. Create permanent, paid graduate student advisory positions that directly work with the Vice Provost for Graduate Education on key affordability issues, such as salaries and benefits, to monitor and address graduate student needs across the university.