Food Insecurity for U of A Grad Assistants Worsens Amid COVID-19

The Graduate Education Building located on the University of Arkansas campus, sits dormant Oct. 12, 2020. // Photo by Matt Hofmann.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – When Sarah Loucks came to the University of Arkansas in 2019 to pursue a master’s in playwriting, she knew she would need to work a second job in order to survive on her own. But with a preexisting health condition and no experience outside of the service industry, Loucks had no clue the virus she was hearing about on the news would affect her life so drastically, seemingly overnight.

Prior to COVID-19 hitting Arkansas hard in the early months of summer, graduate teachers’ assistants at the U of A often worked an extra job or two to help make ends meet. Loucks, for example, worked a second job within the service industry.

But when the virus broke out, Loucks was forced to leave her job.

“I have asthma so I can’t work a customer-facing job right now, and all of my experience is in customer-facing jobs, so it’s been really tight,” Loucks said.

Loucks currently works in the theatre department for the University of Arkansas, where she is paid roughly $12,600 on a nine-month contract, an amount many grad students deem an unlivable wage.

“Some of us have to work second jobs to supplement, and the coronavirus has eliminated that opportunity for some of us which has made things very financially difficult and created a greater issue of food insecurity for grad students, which was already an issue,” Loucks said.

Washington County currently is producing the most new COVID-19 cases within the state of Arkansas. // Graphic by Mary Hennigan.

As of Oct. 12, 2020, Washington County leads the state of Arkansas in new positive coronavirus cases, leaving Loucks to wonder when, or if, she’ll be able to return to work anytime soon.

A budget summary for the 2020 fiscal year details the payroll for graduate assistants in the Theatre department, Loucks current employer.

A study done by Dr. Amy K. Glasmeier and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that the minimum living wage for a single adult with no children in the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR area is $22, 286.

A difference of about $10,000 Loucks no longer has a way to come up with.

“I’ve used the food pantry and I’ve used this organization called Mayday Kitchen,” Loucks said, “and it makes things really stressful. It makes it hard to be a good teacher and be a good student when you don’t have secure access to food.”

A 2016 Student Affairs Report published by the University of Arkansas Center for Community Engagement found that 47% of graduate students are food insecure, versus 37% for undergraduates at the UofA in 2015.

Food Security Across Demographics charts show how disproportionately graduate students face food insecurity versus undergraduates. // Graphic created by the University of Arkansas Center for Community Engagement.

The report also found that “the minimum stipend for graduate assistants is $1000/month (Graduate School) which is insufficient money for living, especially when the graduate assistant is the only income earner in the household that also includes dependents.”

“We teach a large number of the introductory classes for freshman,” Loucks said, ” and that’s a huge issue when the people who are teaching your foundational curriculum are eating out of food pantries.”

Chair for the Jane B. Gearhart Full Circle Campus Food Pantry, Kolten Long, says over the summer they saw a huge increase in people accessing the food pantry, with a noticeable spike in graduate assistants.

Loucks isn’t the only one feeling the stresses of insufficient pay during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’ve had a second job the whole time I’ve been here,” said Mackenzie Peery, a third-year creative writing graduate student and teaching assistant. “If my car were to break down, my husband’s car breakdown, or I go into medical debt, it could potentially be catastrophic.”

The issue of graduate student teaching assistants at the University of Arkansas being under-compensated for the amount of work they provide has been an issue for a while, Peery says, but with the pandemic, the already fragile situation has turned into something much worse.

“I think the thing that really galvanized this discussion among graduate T.A.’s was the Covid epidemic,” Peery said. “Seeing the second and third jobs that we need in order to pay bills go away because of Covid really, I think, motivated us to take a look at what we’re already doing and see what we can ask for that would be competent with the work that we’re already performing.”

Graduate teaching assistants have formed a letter of petition to University of Arkansas Chancellor Joseph Steinmetz calling for an immediate emergency stipend of $2,500 to all 2020/2021 graduate assistants and teaching assistants who are currently making less than $15,000 a year.

Peely along with a few other graduate students who signed the letter were invited to a meeting with the Chancellor where they were told about the funding complications at an administrative level with fulfilling the grads’ demands.

But for graduate students like Loucks who cannot work due to preexisting medical issues, explaining the difficulties doesn’t offer much peace of mind.

A committee has been established by the University of Arkansas tasked with finding a solution to this issue, but graduate assistants have not been given a timeline or any updates since the initial meeting in mid-September.

“Nobody goes to grad school expecting to get rich or make a lot of money,” Peely said, “but I think the hope is that we would be able to live on the work that we were doing.”