Editor’s note: This article is a part of The Daily Illini’s Semester in Review issue. Regular publication will resume Friday, Jan. 11.

The Graduate Employees’ Organization worked with the University this semester to secure a new contract for graduate employees over an eight-month period, meeting with the University more than 20 times since last April.

The University and GEO agreed on a finalized contract on Dec. 7, securing tuition waivers for the next five years.

Before coming to this agreement, the GEO came close to a strike, voting for the formation of a strike committee to make work action plans in late November.

The principal issue for graduate students on campus during the contract negotiation process was tuition waivers. For many GEO members, tuition waivers are essential for the continuance of their work and education at the University.

“We feel that tuition waivers are necessary for access to higher education for people of all incomes and diversity. We think it’s really important that tuition waivers are maintained,” GEO member Erin Heath said. “I couldn’t afford to go here if I didn’t have a tuition waiver.”

In addition to the contract, the University came out with a side agreement in which the University administration agreed to abide by the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board’s ruling regarding violations of the previous contract. Those violations came in 2010 when the University reduced waivers for graduate students in the College of Fine and Applied Arts.

The University has agreed to repay affected assistants with 7 percent interest. The GEO is now working to get a list of those members together, Seawell said. She said she cannot speculate how long that will take.

During negotiations, the GEO hosted various work-ins, rallies and other meetings in order to raise the attention of and increase communication with the undergraduate students they instruct. On Nov. 9, the GEO hosted its “We Want to Work” rally outside of the Undergraduate Library.

At “Unity at the Union,” a work-in hosted on Nov. 26, some GEO members stayed at the union overnight as an “act of symbolic civil disobedience” at the “center of campus community at this University,” according to a GEO news release.

GEO spokeswoman Stephanie Seawell said more than 30 people stayed at the Union past midnight and more than a dozen stayed all night.

The GEO and the University are now working alongside each other to proofread and complete the contract that the GEO voted to ratify Dec. 7. Seawell said the process takes “a bit of back and forth, but it’s moving.”

After the contract is signed and in place, she said University administration will start to go back and pay members who have not yet been given their raises since the contract negotiations began last August.

Some departments had already begun to give graduate employees the 2.5 percent raise in anticipation of the contract being passed. Seawell said the compensation would appear in either the January or February paychecks for graduate employees.

Seawell said she feels the GEO ended up in a good place, but negotiations could have been more productive. She said she is pleased that the GEO had secured tuition waivers, however.

“Hopefully this issue of tuition waivers is settled, and the administration will realize that this is important, and we won’t have to revisit this in five years,” she said.

Tyler can be reached at [email protected].