UM GSA

THE SOAPBOX

THE SOAPBOX

The Graduate Student Association represents the graduate student community as a whole at the University of Miami but also recognizes the individual voices of each of those students. In keeping with that spirit, the GSA is introducing its newest initiative, “The Soapbox”. This space is for any graduate student to voice their opinions and share their thoughts on anything and everything and have a forum for those thoughts to be heard and shared!

Disclaimer: The views listed on this page are not shared or endorsed by the GSA. The GSA is merely offering a space for individual opinions to be voiced and does so in an impartial way.“

07/30/2020

Participation in the U.S. 2020 Census

Preston Taylor Stone

Chairman, Committee for Social and Civic Engagement

Graduate Student Association (GSA)

According to the United States Constitution, at the start of each decade, all persons within the boundaries of the country are mandated to participate in a census. Below is information about the 2020 census that will be helpful to you in filling out your census documentation. As the chair of the GSA Committee for Social and Civic Engagement, it is my duty to you to stress the importance of filling out the U.S. Census. Not only is the census required by law, it provides extremely important information that is used to apportion government funds and decide the amount of representation in local and federal government. Now more than ever, we must all make sure the data provided in the census is as accurate as possible.

What is the census?

The U.S. participates in a decennial mandatory census count, meaning every ten years every person (whether citizen, permanent resident, or undocumented individual) is required to report their household information to the United States Census Bureau, an agency under the U.S. Department of Commerce.

What does the census tell the government?

The census is how the federal and local governments apportion representation in legislative bodies, funds for welfare projects, and helps the U.S. Department of Commerce produce economic reports about the population of the United States and its five territories. 

Is the census important?

In short, yes. Because the U.S. has a representative form of democracy, the number of seats awarded to districts of voters is dependent on how many voters populate that district. Census data is how congressional maps are drawn, meaning that accurate representation in government depends on accurate census data. Additionally, because the federal and local governments determine funding allocation based on population, the census data is crucial to getting resources to those who need it.

Who is required to participate in the census?

Everyone living in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Isles, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). This includes all citizens, non-citizen immigrants, undocumented persons, and other permanent residents.

How do I fill out the census?

The census takes about 2-3 minutes to fill out and can be done completely online. Go to 2020census.gov to fill out the census.

As a student, what location do I list as my residency?

As a university student, you may be wondering whether you should fill out the census based on your address at UM. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, all students, no matter legal or citizenship status, must fill out their census information based on where they live most of their time. Due to the COVID-19 crisis, this may have changed; however, the Census Bureau maintains that students should use resident information based on where they would have been living in non-coronavirus circumstances. For more information on this, go to https://2020census.gov/en/who-to-count.html.

Is it dangerous for me to fill out the census?

By law, the data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau is to be used to produce statistical data only. All data is federally protected and secured and cannot be used in a court of law against any person whatsoever.

What happens if I do not fill out the census?

By law, if you are over the age of 18 and refuse to answer all or part of the census, you could be fined up to $100. If you give false answers, you’re subject to a fine of up to $500. If you offer suggestions or information with the “intent to cause inaccurate enumeration of population,” you are subject to a fine of up to $1,000, up to a year in prison, or both.

What questions are on the census?

There are twelve questions on the census. If you live alone, you will answer fewer.

  1. How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1, 2020?
  2. Were there any additional people staying here on April 1, 2020, that you did not include in Question 1?
  3. Is this house, apartment, or mobile home …
  4. What is your telephone number?
  5. What is Person 1’s name?
  6. What is Person 1’s sex?
  7. What is Person 1’s age and what is Person 1’s date of birth?
  8. Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin?
  9. What is Person 1’s race?
  10. Print name of Person 2.
  11. Does this person usually live or stay somewhere else? 
  12. How is this person related to Person 1?

Go to https://2020census.gov/en/about-questions.html to find out why these questions and what each of these may entail. Important note: no question asks about citizenship status.

When do I have to complete the census?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the census is to be completed before April 1, 2020. However, due to COVID-19, the Census Bureau has extended this timeline. All operations will be completed by October 2020; however, because the census only takes 2-3 minutes to complete, I encourage you to do it as soon as possible.

If you have any more questions about the U.S. Census, please feel free to contact myself at ptstone@miami.edu.

07/13/2020

“I’m grateful for my US citizen privilege right now” , Are you?

By Yasamin Rezaei, PhD student at Modern Languages and Literature, University of Miami

  • … But what is going on right now?

Debates and distress abruptly were spread among students and the faculty in universities nationwide after The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security founded 17 years ago with the stated mission to protect America from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration that threaten national security and public safety, announced that International students must leave the US if their classes go fully online due to the pandemic.

According to the New York Times, The White House measure was seen as an effort to pressure universities into reopening their gates and abandoning the cautious approaches that many have announced they would adopt to reduce Covid-19 transmission. Leaving many new coming or first-year international students confused about if they are now eligible to apply for a student visa to start an academic year in the US which is as far as 4 weeks ahead according to new academic calendars, those international students currently living in the US and struggling with the daily dosage of uncertainty raising from COVID-19 or/and Trump’s administration policies are now clueless if they have to renew their housing contracts for another year, or if they have to start searching for some flights back home, the flights that currently and do not exist at the moment. 

According to this new legislation, if what happened in March happens again, which mean if the number of infected people in a city goes on the surge again and the classes go online due to that, the student visas, even the ones already issued, will be at serious jeopardy. After all, we all know that it is not far from expectations that what happened in March, happens again if campuses open up and students come back to the universities from all over the country and from different states with a different number of infections. As of hybrid and in-person mode both require the presence and return of students, one is only slightly wiser than the other while both can be quite alarming.

Apart from the health issues and the current life-and-death status, New York Times reports that “The financial repercussions to institutions are potentially very traumatic,” said Daniel J. Hurley, chief executive of the Michigan Association of State Universities, which represents the state’s public universities. He cited studies showing that 33,236 international students contributed $1.2 billion to Michigan’s economy in 2018. According to the same report published on New York Times on July 7th , Janet Napolitano, the president of the University of California system and a former Homeland Security secretary under President Barack Obama, described the rule as a “double whammy” that would probably result in budget cuts at many schools, which have already suffered financially during the pandemic.

  • Are we all one “U”?

While the pre-election tensions in the atmosphere of the always-bipolar political system cause many damages to many minorities, some minorities are always more marginal and go under more pressure compared to others. In November 2019, I spoke up at GSA meeting raising this concern that a number of international applicants from Iran who are planning to apply to UM as graduate students, cannot submit their applications online due to a sudden Internet shutdown from the government after protests in Iran. I asked Dean Prado, that unfortunately could not stay until the end of that meeting that day, and the graduate school to extend the application deadlines for the students who reside in Iran, just so they can have an equal opportunity to apply to their favorite graduate schools so that we can have all hardworking talents from all over the world here at UM. I voiced the idea that every International student at Graduate school brings a valuable part of “self” as a building block to make a more beautifully diverse “U” and that all skin colors , voices cultures and accents are needed here at the University of Miami, as a dynamic academic community. Sadly, the problem was not a kind of problem that everybody could identify with, so it left alone unheard. While many universities such as Harvard, MIT, Brown and Stanford had joined the campaign to extend the application deadlines for Iranian students, University of Miami was one of the universities that left this invitation in silent and ignored it. UM did not join this campaign back in 2019. 

However, I am glad to see in a situation that tuition fees might be endangered or graduate work at university being mostly done by graduate assistants in exchange of a monthly stipend is in a cloud of suspension, the fear of economic harms and intellectual loss with the pinch of supportive spirit by the University of Miami has made the UM join MIT and Harvard’s lawsuit against U.S. federal government. According to an email sent to all of us on July 10th by International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS), University of Miami joins lawsuit opposing deportation of international students.

 Don’t want to play “who’s the most miserable?” card, but whatever trouble #internationalstudents are going through now, it’s tripled for Iranians (and those from #travelban countries). Not to mention that a lot of them have single-entry visas, meaning that there is no guarantee they can come back to the US and finish their studies if they go back home.

Rahele Abbasinejad, a York PhD candidate majoring Anthropology, tweeted.

I feel the need to highlight this point that according to this rightful tweet, once more, those among international students who might lose years of graduate work and studies by going (or sending!) back home due to being on a single-entry visa, a visa with which you can enter the U.S. once, and on the travel ban at the same time, are passing some seriously tragic days compared to other International students who have multiple-entry visas and are not on the travel ban. When Iranian students were being sent back home from the different U.S, gates at the airports in the past 12 months due to political tensions between two governments of Iran and the U.S., no one spoke up for them, especially in academia. 

Sometimes a misery needs to grow wider, goes further and comes closer to our doors so that we decide to notice it and admit it. It reminds me of COVID-19 that so many people refused to believe its existence until they lost some relatives and dear lives. So yes, while some students have this right to take some time off with their families back in their home countries, take courses online and then come back to resume their studies, Iranian students or other students from the countries on the travel ban, are more confused and in pain than ever.

This new rule will affect some of us and not all of us. In the body of the faculty and scholars, those international scholars on F1 and M1 visas are in the danger of even being deported if they refuse to go back home in case things get really bad. That extreme case is what the attorney at the UM webinar on July 9th called this a “catastrophe situation”. Among international students, again some will be under more pressure. Rules will affect some of us these days depending on the skin of our colors or the citizenship we hold, a paper on which our hometown has been printed. These are what invisibly or now visibly separates us when it comes to rules within US borders. 

  • “I am grateful for my US citizen privilege right now.”

Said a friend in the middle of a tragically miserable conversation among a group of mostly International graduate students after the most recent ICE’s announcement and It has been 4 days I cannot take this sentence off my mind. What did my friend mean? As a non-native English speaker and scholar, I let myself doubt about the words a lot and that is why I asked the dear Google and many dictionaries about two words: grateful and privilege. You might find it funny, but I would like all of us to take a moment and revise these two words: 

Grateful means thankful. Example: “The person who feels gratitude is thankful for what they have and does not constantly seek more”. 

Privilege: After BLM and all the debates centering around it, we all can agree what privilege means. a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group. “education is a right, not a privilege”, for example.

So my friend actually was glad and thankful to get away with the source of trouble this time. That “special right” that had something to do with her/his birth paper, could have saved that student from her/his fellows’ trouble. “how many more people think that way?” I asked myself. 

How do we address minorities or margins? How do we weigh them? Do we recognize them by the number of their members- because if this was to be measured, why do we name them by what directly has something to do with that number which is apparently smaller compared to a majority, with a bigger number, a minority? Do we react or acknowledge the existence of minorities by the number of people being affected by bad law, or being discriminated, ignored, ghosted and constantly othered, or do we acknowledge minorities by the media’s latest trend or what makes our community or business more respected in public containing a majority, who might be blind to see that minority? How long can we keep ghosting minorities and remaining indifferent to bad policies that only affect some of us, and among this some of us, even fewer people – that whoever they are, they are not us, they are not me?

Do you feel grateful for having a paper and a right comes by birth by older immigration to protect you against the bad law, or do you feel embarrassed of living in a society in which invisible borders and visible newly-built walls keep separating YOU from others based on some magical powers, such as here, a birth certificate and a passport? Are you also grateful for your skin color and all the other rights that in such society comes as privileges? Are you actually grateful for not being on the other side?

 Are we all one human after all and are we all one U? 

I leave these questions open to whoever is reading these words, ending this essay with poetry by this poetic form of a prose post-war confession first made in German in 1946 by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984). It is about the cowardice of German intellectuals and certain clergy (including, by his own admission, Niemöller himself) following the Nazis‘ rise to power and subsequent incremental purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

“They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. 

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Immigration_and_Customs_Enforcement

 [ii] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/us/student-visas-coronavirus.html