Public university tells graduate students to oppose Republican tax reform

Graduate students at the taxpayer-subsidized University of North Dakota received an email from the Office of Graduate Studies encouraging students to lobby against the Republican proposed tax reform bill that is currently under debate.

The email includes a message with information on the bill from the Council of Graduate School’s President, who provides a formal letter for students to send to their Congressional Representatives. The letter insists that the tax reform will be a disaster for students, and includes the hashtag #DontTaxEducation.

Following the letter template, the email encourages students to “personalize the message as much as possible, since personal messages are often given greater weight than form letters.”

The sender of the email was identified as Chris Nelson, the associate dean for the School of Graduate Studies and also an associate professor of English at the university.

Following a backlash over the use of taxpayer-subsidized university resources to advocate for a political cause, the university was forced to issue a statement claiming that although they did have concerns about the bill’s potential impact on impact higher education, they were not advocating for students to support a particular political cause.