Many Louisiana State University (LSU) graduate students have been excluded from receiving any CARES dollars allocated to LSU. This exclusion leaves many impoverished and uninsured graduate students hard pressed to continue their education, and recuperate unexpected costs due to COVID, which in turn, (due to the integral role graduate students play in universities) imperils the functioning of the University.

The CARES Act guidance indicated that half of the monies are to be distributed to low-income students, which would include most graduate students, who almost always earn significantly less than a local living wage. The University has elected to use the EFC (Expected Family Contribution) to determine how much each student should receive from the over $9 million of CARES Act monies it obtained from the federal government. Yet, it failed to inform graduate students that they would need to fill out a FAFSA, and did not notify them of the University's May 9 FAFSA deadline until after the fact. This petition seeks to extend the relief opportunity to many students who have been left out due to LSU’s mishandling of the CARES Act monies.

The University’s reliance on an arbitrary deadline and this metric as the sole indicator of student need leaves out many graduate students for two reasons: 1) Graduate students are not required to complete the FAFSA form (as undergraduates are), and many graduate students never file one, either because of the lack of federal funding options it provides or because of the University's misinformation about fees and misleading data about the cost of living in Louisiana. Since many graduate student workers have no intention of going into debt to pay for their education, because their tuition expenses are contractually meant to be covered by the university, it is unfair to prioritize students who have prior loans—especially without an opportunity to fill out a FAFSA form in time for CARES funding. 2) The University capriciously set the deadline to complete the FAFSA form on May 9th, the end of the spring semester. LSU failed to communicate this deadline to graduate students until the deadline had passed: many eligible graduate students would have completed the FAFSA form if they knew it might allow them to receive some of these funds. The University appears to have prioritized its own convenience over the needs of many of its students.

LSU’s May 9th deadline for completing the FAFSA application in order to receive a share of the funds is arbitrary. Many of LSU’s peer institutions have shown considerably more foresight and compassion in how they are distributing these funds. Mississippi State University and the University of Arkansas, for example, have given their graduate students until June 1st to complete the FASFA to be considered for receiving CARES money. These students were also promptly notified of what actions to take in order to be considered for receipt of these funds. See our fact sheet regarding these and other peer institutions' policies here.

The University could not operate without the labor provided by research and graduate teaching assistants, who allow faculty to do the types of research and teaching commensurate with a Research I institution. Moreover, graduate research and teaching assistants are already paid at or near poverty-levels even before their stipends are eaten up by mandatory University fees, which are among the highest in the nation.

The University claims that it is also giving students relief through using some of the CARES ACT funds to underwrite a 15% discount for summer classes. This discount appears as a credit on students’ fee bills, which creates the misleading impression that students were given money. But this 15% credit does not provide money for graduate students to pay their immediate expenses or to save for future expenses, given that their time at the University will likely be extended due to stay-at-home orders that closed the campus. While the discounted summer tuition that was underwritten by some of the CARES Act funds might be in accordance with the legislation’s rules, the scheme is misleading: it makes it look as if the University gave this money to students when in fact, it will be clawed back by LSU whether or not students enroll in summer school. It also denies assistance to many students who are graduating this spring into the catastrophically bad job market and economy.

To remedy this situation, we the undersigned demand that Louisiana State University extend the deadline for completing a FAFSA application in order to be considered for cash awards from the CARES Act monies to the federal cut-off of June 30th. We also demand that this change be clearly and immediately communicated to students via email as well as displayed prominently on the Graduate School’s and the University’s Covid-19 informational websites. The University must also share this information via its various social media platforms as well as college and departmental websites where students might go to receive information.