Urgent! UMass student workers need your help!
Last December, right before finals began the UMass Amherst Residential Life terminated 73 Peer Mentor and Apartment Living Assistance student positions without consent or the consideration of students. After pressure from students and community allies, UMass put together an academic support services committee to decide the fate of these student workers… but conventionally forgot to have a student voice on the UMass campus once again, allowing them to have only 2 of the 7 seats.
The committee is scheduled to meet and make their recommendation tomorrow, so we need your help to make sure the students voice is heard loud and clear: Reinstate the 73 Peer Mentor and ALA positions now and stop the restructuring of Residential Life without student input!
Student workers are being forced to wait while a committee debates and votes on their fate, and they are being completely excluded from the conversation. Please email these committee members and let them know that you stand on the side of student workers and student involvement in these decisions.
Vice Provost Carol Barr: cbarr@provost.umass.edu
Assistant Provost Pamela Marsh Williams: marshwil@acad.umass.edu
Executive Director of ResLife Eddie Hull: ehull@gw.housing.umass.edu
Director of Residence Education Tara Loomis: tloomis@gw.housing.umass.edu
Director of Learning Resource Center Susan Bronstein: sbronstein@acad.umass.edu
Director of Residental Housing Assoication: Emma Allen erallenRHA@yahoo.com
Student Government President: Yevin Roh sga.president@stuaf.umass.edu
An email to this committee can look as simple as this:
“I am writing you to state my support of reinstating the Peer Mentors and Apartment Living Assistants! No student should have deal with their job being in limbo like this while they try to do well in school, pay their tuition, and help their classmates. Any decision on the restructuring of the Residential Life should include a majority of students – the providers and recipients of the dorms.
Reinstate the Peer Mentors and ALA’s!”
Each email counts right now, so please forward this to friends and family. We need to stand in solidarity now more than ever before – this is just the beginning of the struggle at UMass Amherst for student involvement in decision making.
[…] movement. For example, peer mentors as the University of Massachusetts who were fired recently have launched a campaign in which they object, not to the substance of the policy decision to eliminate peer mentors, but to the unjust process […]
[…] For example, peer mentors as the University of Massachusetts who were fired recently have launched a campaign in which they object, not to the substance of the policy decision to eliminate peer mentors, but to the unjust process […]