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Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
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FRANCESCA BOSTON lifestyles editor
SIUE will require health insurance for all students starting Fall 2023, with an additional $1,200 fee for students who do not have their own health insurance. A waiver process is available for students with preexisting health insurance. Michael Schultz, public health response coordinator, said many state schools in Illinois have required insurance for many years, and SIUE has always required health insurance for international students. Schultz said the school has increasingly found that students who aren’t previously covered have needed health insurance. “What we found was that there were situations where stu-
Thursday, April 27, 2023 Vol. 76 No. 27
dents would run into a medical line, they will have access to the emergency insurance, and have but it is no insurnot reance and quired. they would T h e have to Now students will be able p o l i c y drop out states the to not have to pay for of school definition because of “full [the mandatory health they had time stuno way of dents” insurance], if they have paying for by already covered under a varies it,” Schultz student said. health insurance policy.” p o p u l a Schultion. For Michael Schultz tz said underhealth ingraduates, Public Health Response Coordinator surance pharmacy will only and dental be required for full-time students students in the fall/spring semestaking 12 or more hours and tak- ters must take at least 12 hours, ing at least one class on campus. graduate students at least nine He said if students are fully on- hours and graduate assistants at
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least six hours. The waiver process, which Schultz said will begin in midJune, will allow students to submit proof of insurance in order to remove the insurance cost from their fall 2023 bill. “If a student doesn’t want to see it on their bill and [it] is not included in their first installment payment, they can submit their insurance by, probably, the third week of June,” Schultz said. International students have always been required to have health insurance at SIUE. Fatimot Onanusi, an international student from Nigeria and former vice president of Student Government, said international students have found the cost of the health insurance to be a burden, and brought the issue to administration in the fall semester. She
said they responded with the new mandatory plan for everyone which actually raised the price of the health insurance for international students. “I understand why they had to do it, and I believe that everyone should have access to health insurance, but it is a bit frustrating to bring an issue to the attention of administration, and in response, they make it worse,” Onanusi said. Onanusi said the price will increase by several hundred dollars for international students and drop by several hundred for domestic students who may have used the insurance provided by SIUE this year. For more information see SIUE Policies and Procedures Mandatory Health Insurance Policy 4C5, or Health Services website.
Union negotiations remain unsuccessful, all of campus may face consequences BRUCE DARNELL sports editor CHLOE WOLFE photographer DYLAN HEMBROUGH reporter
Unions across campus believe that as the university continues to refuse their demands in contract negotiations, students will start to see drastic effects. Many of the unions that are still negotiating have been since the beginning of the semester. Most feel university administrators have not been listening to them. The faculty, the clerical workers and the building service workers’ unions are seeking pay raises. Some, like the building service workers, have also sought better maternity leave than the federal minimum. The food service workers’ union were able to secure a new contract, like SIUE’s academic advisors earlier this year. When asked for a comment, Chancellor James Minor and Beverly Bevineau, assistant director of labor and employee relations, did not reply directly. Kedra Tolson, executive director of marketing and communications and administration spokesperson, responded via email on behalf of the university regarding the egotiation process. “We will not comment on
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the details of ongoing contract negotiations,” administration spokesperson Kedra Tolson said in an email. “However, the university will continue to negotiate in good faith while maintaining our commitment to affordability and accessibility for the region’s students.”
FACULTY AND STAFF FIGHT FOR MORE FUNDING AND HIGHER PAY
Ed Navarre, president of SIUE Faculty Association, gave a speech after negotiating on April 13 to a crowd of faculty members and students protesting outside Rendleman Hall. “We’ve heard back on workload, salary and other details,” Navarre said. “We’re still working on some of the details, but we disagree on some aspects of what they’re saying … [The new] proposal doesn’t make us enthusiastic.” Navarre said there is still a sense of a contingent salary, which means that salary increases may become dependent on enrollment — which the university has proposed — instead of being linked to cost of living or merit. Navarre said this may cause issues as faculty have no control over how many people are enrolled at campus. “The best they could offer [is increases based on] if we met all the maximum enrollment increases this coming year and the following two years — about 600 additional students than what we saw this last fall,” Navarre said. “[That] would get us about a 9.5
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Rebecca Halford, a BSW, holds her newborn baby surrounded by other BSWs holding up signs. Halford had to come back to work soon after a traumatic birth followed by 7 1/2 weeks in the NICU because she ran out of FMLA time. | Chloe Wolfe / The Alestle percent increase over four years, which barely addresses the inflation we face today.” Academic institutions across the United States are seeing more unions organizing on campus in the face of rising inflation coupled with low wages. Navarre mentioned multiple institutions, one of which was Eastern Illinois University, where faculty went on strike earlier this month. “All those institutions demonstrated collective action, what [the crowd is] doing here by showing up and being a member of the faculty association, and
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they were able to demand a fair contract,” Navarre said. “Not all of them went on strike. That’s not necessarily all that there is to do – some of them did – but all of them benefited from having their faculty join together during negotiation.” Departments such as geology, anthropology, English, mass communications and music have lost teaching assistants due to lack of funding. One student at the protest was Joshua Last, a freshman in the music program. He said he learned about it from his music
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theory professor, Kim Archer. Archer is also the former president of the SIUE Faculty Association “So [Archer] told us this morning that they needed as many bodies as they could get,” Last said. “And she told us all what was happening, the same stats that she’s said up there [in the speech]. It just sucks because we know a lot of the TAs in the jazz department, they help out a lot. They teach our primary ensemble class. It’s taught almost 100 percent by grad students, and see UNION on page 3
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