The long-anticipated UF presidential search made significant progress on May 4 when the search committee unanimously recommended Santa J. Ono as the sole finalist to serve as the university’s 14th president.
As the former president of the University of Michigan, Ono moved to implement programs designed to improve student life, such as Campus Plan 2050, a comprehensive blueprint for the Ann Arbor campus’ future development, and the Go Blue Guarantee, U-M's commitment to cover undergraduate tuition and fees for in-state students for up to four years.
His administration faced significant criticism for reducing investments in diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives after the controversial closure of the university’s Office of DEI. Ono and the student body clashed over concerns U-M’s Graduate Employees’ Organization had regarding graduate student workers’ employment contracts.
Union efforts at the University of Michigan
GEO represents about 2,300 graduate students who work as instructors and staff assistants across the school’s Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint campuses.
Lavinia Dunagan, a third-year U-M natural language processing student and GEO’s communications co-chair, said she felt graduate students were ignored during the 2022-2023 bargaining cycle between GEO and U-M because the administration was unwilling to reach a compromise on a new three-year contract agreement.
“Ono has mostly focused on undergrad life and ostentatious, donor-driven areas like football, leaving grad students out of the spotlight,” Dunagan said. “We really felt that Ono didn’t want to spend more on graduate students, which was a key reason for the resistance to our contract and why we ultimately went on strike.”
The organization argued that current pay is not sufficient for the cost of living in Ann Arbor, improvements to their health care plan and changes to campus security policies.
The livable annual wage of a single adult living in Ann Arbor requires just over $49,000, according to MIT’s livable wage calculator. The new union contract demanded a livable annual salary of $38,537. A livable wage is the amount a person or family needs in order to meet their basic needs, including food, housing, healthcare and necessary expenses.
After five months of negotiations during the academic year, GEO initiated a strike because the university failed to reach an agreement.
The strike, which was the longest in the union’s history, included a walkout from classes on March 29, 2023, by graduate employees and instructors. During the protest, tensions escalated between U-M and GEO. Ono’s administration sought legal action against the protesters.
The university filed a complaint against them the next day in Washtenaw County Circuit Court, alleging the union breached its contract by striking. Washtenaw County Circuit Judge Carol Kunke denied Ono’s request for a preliminary injunction to end the walkout, and the strike continued.
It lasted most of the summer, ending August 25 when the union and the university agreed on a new three-year contract.
The final contract between U-M and GEO included annual salary increases, a $1,000 bonus and increased benefits.
GEO also focused on the status of international students since the beginning of U.S. President Donald Trump’s term, a concern made more urgent because the University of Michigan is home to over 8,000 international students. It heard very little from Ono about specific measures taken to support the university’s international students.
UF graduate student union outlooks
As Ono prepares to settle into Gainesville, UF graduate students are paying close attention. From concerns over labor conditions to protecting international students, many are looking at his past presidency to gauge what his leadership could mean for their future on campus.
Charles D. Langlois, a 32-year-old UF entrepreneurship, Latin American studies and international business graduate student, said he doesn’t expect much from Ono regarding graduate employment and wages.
“My higher education has generally shown me that graduate assistantships and tuition waivers are exceptions to the rules of college, and I have relied on minimal scholarships, grants, federal student loans and family support to get by,” Langlois said.
He said he expects Ono to expand the overall rights of graduate students for their employment and contract with the university and improve ratios of graduate assistants to professors and revenues generated.
Paul Wassel, the former Graduate Student Council president, said he believes Ono coming from Michigan “could mean that he’s open to unions, given U-M’s culture of strong graduate student leadership.”
“I think having a leader who has experience with graduate student leadership will allow them to go ahead and get paid more, and I hope that he is open to having that discussion,” he said.
Nelson Calles, a 22-year-old UF political science alumnus, thinks Ono is similar to UF’s most recent presidential picks.
“I think President Santa Ono is going to maintain an anti-union stance,” Calles said. “Everything that I know about UF admin is that they are fighting to keep unions off campus.”
Issues at hand
Austin Britton, the co-president of UF Graduate Assistants United, said the largest issues facing the union and graduate assistants have been state overreach and high costs of living. To Britton, Ono’s failure to address GEO’s demands at U-M demonstrated how a negative relationship between graduate unions and a president can spiral quickly, something that GAU wants to avoid.
“GAs at UF are some of the least paid when adjusted for the cost of living among our peer institutions, where now GAs at the minimum stipend make the same as someone working a full-time minimum wage job elsewhere in Florida,” Britton said.
GAU is hopeful but uncertain about its future relationship with President Ono as they finish negotiations for a new contract. The union is open to having honest conversations about graduate assistants’ roles and their importance to the university, Britton said. He hopes Ono is equally open to working together toward meaningful solutions.
“While we will approach President Ono with caution, we also acknowledge that he will be stepping into a new university, a new state, and could have a different perspective on graduate unions than he did at U-M,” he said. “As such, we will not condemn him before we get a chance to work with him to address the issues that GAs face.”
Contact Koushin Unber at kunber@alligator.org. Follow her on X at @KUnber27
