University of Iowa students protested in support of Palestine and lowering fees for graduate workers at the Iowa Board of Regents meeting. (Photo by Brooklyn Draisey/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
Protestors waited in silence, holding signs calling for a free Palestine and for the University of Iowa to end its mandatory fees for graduate workers, while the Iowa Board of Regents conducted its meeting Wednesday.
The protesters had gathered outside before walking up the stairs of the Levitt Center, their chants echoing throughout the building before they filed into the board’s meeting room.
Once it was time for public comment, Nicole Yeager began speaking to board members by posing one question: “Do you know what it’s like to be hungry?”
Yeager was referring to the manner in which UI graduate workers struggle to pay for food and rent while collecting low wages and paying for rising mandatory fees imposed by the university — an issue that members of the graduate workers’ union spoke about during the public comment period of Wednesday’s meeting.
Other UI students spoke out about the war in Gaza and told the board that it and the university should break ties with companies like Lockheed Martin and Collins Aerospace.
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Graduate workers are having to work on the frontlines of public education while wondering and worrying about expenses, Yeager said. Other universities provide sign-on bonuses, stipends for moving, and initiatives to cover health care costs and fees, while mandatory fees at UI are set to go up by $49 this fall, if approved by the board at Thursday’s meeting.
The Campaign to Organize Graduate Students, or COGS, has been campaigning for lower fees and pay raises for graduate workers since its last board-meeting protest in September. In March, the union called for a boycott of UI’s One Day for Iowa fundraising day, saying that until the university can make education more affordable and accessible, no one should give their dollars to it.
Other students joined Yeager in sharing their concerns about being able to afford living expenses and an education while paying for health care and university fees. Doctoral student Noah Neiber said the university needs to think of the students who — especially the international students who have to pay additional fees — when deciding what students will have to pay next year.
Protestors also threw red paint on the Levitt Center sign Wednesday morning while the board was in closed session, posting it on social media with the caption “UNIVERSITY OF IOWA HAS BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS … and now the Levitt Center for University ‘Advancement’ does too.”
The post went on to say that the university only advances apartheid and genocide, and people must demand that the university disclose its ties to Israel and divest itself from those partnerships. The sign was cleaned up soon after.
UI students and others on campus began protesting the war in Gaza and calling for an end to the Palestinian genocide earlier in the school year, urging the university to support a ceasefire in Gaza and sever its ties to companies connected to Israel. Protestors rallied during graduation ceremonies and attempted to set up an encampment in Hubbard Park, which was disbanded by police.
According to Reuters, the Israeli military has killed at least 37,000 Palestinians since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, which killed around 1,200 people.
Emma Denney, who graduated with her doctorate this spring, said the University of Iowa and others are complicit in the genocide when they refuse to divest from their Israeli connections and when they suppress dissenting voices such as hers.
She said she sees a connection between the two topics brought up during the meeting, arguing that the board’s willingness to work with police in opposing those who speak out is tied to larger campaigns against pro-Palestine protests.
“The university would want to pretend that it doesn’t have a profit motive but deeply and fundamentally it does, especially when funding from the state keeps going down and down and down and down,” Denney said.
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