Now UC the Truth: Berkeley Grad Story
By Tran Nguyen
UC Berkeley prides itself in being the #1 Public University in the world. As a graduate of this institution, my experience has been a mix of emotions. While I am immensely grateful for my education, resources, and the community that have welcomed me with open arms, I cannot help it but feel like much of my success stemmed from my own advocacy, rather than from institutionalized support systems designed to assist first-generation, low-income students of color like myself.
To start, my freshman year at UC Berkeley was anything but traditional. I entered during the peak of the pandemic and struggled with imposter syndrome from the lack of campus resources to support my transition. Despite significant cuts to education program funding, the university raised the cost of attendance, even though I wasn't fully utilizing all campus resources. I remembered not being able to access advising appointments, not being able to purchase fresh food from on-campus restaurants because they had all closed, and not being able to access campus therapists because their reschedules were restricted during the pandemic. Yet, I was still expected to turn in quality academic work and navigate through these gaps in resources alone.
After the remote learning ended, my education quality was once again put on pause due to the UC-wide graduate student instructor and teaching assistant strike. I was encouraged not to attend classes in solidarity with my student instructors, to whom I owe a great deal of my education and learning (yes, the academic excellence that UC Berkeley prides itself in is made possible by underpaid graduate student instructors and teaching assistants). The strike robbed me valuable Office Hour time to learn the material and classes that I was paying for.
UC Berkeley can cut student resources and programs due to budget constraints but seems to have the money for surveillance on unhoused people. In January, UC Berkeley shelled out $6.6 million to close People’s Park. This included $972,000 for shipping containers and $3.77 million for hiring, feeding, and lodging law enforcement, with $1.5 million allocated for police overtime.
I feel a great injustice. Because while I was struggling to make ends meet and pay rent, UC Berkeley has the money to house, hire, and feed law enforcement officers, but not their own students.
Yet, my experience is not an individual one. We have consistently been told nothing, including housing, was guaranteed to any student. 44% of undergraduate students reported being unhoused during their time at UC Berkeley. Only 22% of Berkeley students were offered housing by the University, which is the LOWEST of all the other schools in the UC System and less than half of the national average.
Why did it have to take for me to plead with University Housing to give me an on-campus housing offer? Why am I paying tuition for campus resources to go everywhere else but toward me and my peers? How can the #1 public university in the world pay their graduate student instructors, teaching assistants, and research assistants below minimum wage?
It is long overdue that we fully fund California’s public universities and colleges so students like me don’t have to fight to survive, but THRIVE in higher education.