Health insurance. Child care. Student loans. Cockroaches in their houses.

On Tuesday night, MU graduate students expressed a myriad of concerns.

Administrators, journalists and numerous disgruntled students gathered Tuesday night in the Geological Sciences Building for the Forum on the Graduate Student Experience. Associate Vice Chancellor for Graduate Studies Leona Rubin fielded questions, but one key player was missing.

Nowhere in the crowd could a cheerful-looking man in a suit and bowtie be found. Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin was not present. Instead, he was away at a retreat with the UM Board of Curators.

Tuesday’s forum was the latest episode in a dispute between graduate students and administrators that began in mid-August. The trouble began when administration withdrew the graduate student health care subsidy just 13 hours before the scheduled renewal date.

In response to this perceived slight, graduate students banded together and created the Forum on Graduate Student Rights, which published a list of seven demands of administration Aug. 19. Administrators did not provide an adequate plan of action regarding the demands, which begat a graduate student walk out Aug. 24.

Connor Lewis, a doctoral history student, is on the steering committee for the Forum on Graduate Rights and is also involved with the Coalition of Graduate Workers. He was not satisfied with Loftin’s reasoning for being absent.

“This forum has been planned for weeks and Chancellor Loftin couldn’t be here,” Lewis said. “And they knew that they don’t plan a retreat overnight, so clearly they could have made a time for Chancellor Loftin to be available and they chose not to. And, frankly, I think that Chancellor Loftin has spent the entire time ducking his responsibility in this whole debacle.”

Even without Loftin in the room, the recent cuts to graduate health insurance provided plenty of tension. At one point, the questions Rubin faced were so confrontational that the moderator had to warn the graduate students to calm their tone.

“The biggest thing I took away is that the administration is still not ready to listen to us,” third-year English doctoral student Jim Hayden said.

The graduate students’ concerns did not end with insurance. Halfway into the two-hour forum, the students were given the chance to offer advice for how to better their experience. They had plenty of advice to give, listing off a variety of issues.

The students discussed housing concerns, contract problems, trust issues and student debt, among other problems. After nearly every comment, the crowd clapped for the speaker.

After the forum, Lewis approached exiting graduate students and collected signatures for the Coalition of Graduate Workers.

“We’re launching a drive to unionize graduate employees at the University of Missouri,” he said.

Though he did appreciate Rubin’s willingness to answer questions, Lewis’ feelings did not change after the forum.

“Frankly, I think my biggest take away was the fact that the university isn’t really offering answers,” Lewis said. “They’re expecting us to come up with the solutions on our own when this is something they should be working on.”