Resolution in Support of Graduate Student Efforts to Secure Affordable, Comprehensive Healthcare Coverage

About the related petition: An online peition containing letters from doctoral and masters students collected over 1200 signatures by April 19, 2021 and can be viewed here.

WHEREAS the Faculty Congress takes as a matter of interest the well-being of Villanova students, including the well-being of its graduate students financially dependent on the University; and Faculty Congress responds to the call integral to Catholic Social Thought to explicitly attend to needs of the most vulnerable within our community;

WHEREAS the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the graduate students financially dependent on the University – who continue to teach courses, to serve as teaching interns and teaching assistants, to work in labs, and to strive to complete their programs of study – has exacerbated the short-term and the long-term precarity of their financial and health situation;

WHEREAS graduate students financially dependent on the University are prohibited from seeking outside employment to supplement their finances during the academic year as a condition of their assistantships;

WHEREAS the University recognizes, as stated in the “Rooted. Restless.” Strategic Plan, that “increasing support” for our graduate students will “advance our research mission, build our community and strengthen our national stature”;

BE IT RESOLVED THAT VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY’S FACULTY CONGRESS:

Unanimously supports the efforts of the graduate students financially dependent on the University to secure more comprehensive and affordable healthcare for themselves.

Calls on Villanova to provide fully subsidized health insurance to graduate students who are financially dependent upon the University.

The Faculty Congress of Villanova University
April 15, 2021