Tel Aviv University International students volunteering and support group

We report here the email of today sent from the TRFO, great news for everyone! ____________________________________________ Hello, Thanks to our struggle and to your impressive support and engagement (including a petition signed by over 700 scholarship recipients), the university changed its decision not to raise scholarships for the 2022-23 academic year.  Therefore, during last week’s public meeting with scholarship recipients, we decided not to escalate our struggle against the university administration, but rather to continue building and organizing our collective power through activity groups, so that we may act quickly in case the administration does not deliver on its promises.  We received the wording of the administration’s decision this week. The different items of the decision are detailed below:   Scholarship amounts will increase by at least 5% for the 2023-24 academic year, for all scholarship recipients, including postdoctoral fellows - whose scholarship am...

Today we met the representatives of  Teaching and Research Faculty Organization , the body in the university that represents the scholars, meaning everyone who is receiving a scholarship and they are not employed by the university. The core issue was about the scholarship amounts vs the increase cost of life (CPI). Here below we report their email: Prices are rising - raise the scholarships! The semester is already ending and the university administration still hasn’t raised scholarships according to the consumer price index (CPI) (almost 5%), in violation of its agreement with the Teaching and Research Faculty Organization from 2009. What does this mean for us? That the university owes each scholar between 330 and 3150 NIS for the semester (depending on scholarship percentage and research stage)! Meanwhile, the cost of living is rising! As a result of our advocacy over the past weeks, the administration is finally addressing the issue: the president of the university told us that ...

 In these weeks, many though things are happening. Some of them, touched us in particular. First of all, the Research Student Senate finally met on the 5th of January. The discussion was mostly targeted at understanding the conditions and the necessities of the international students upon their arrival. We managed to point out some of the issues to be dealt with once one comes in Israel and gets to live on campus (Broshim dorms). Regarding this specific dormitory, we once asked to have the possibility to see the waiting lists in order to monitor the "positions" in the list, but this thing is not possible for policy reasons. The focus was straightforward on this situation given the little time we had to meet. Ulterior debate was carried out on the possibility of having a free or subsidized Ulpan (i.e. Hebrew course), a proposal we raised back then in November. For now, the official answer is that they are trying to get to some arrangement with the company providing the classes...

I report here a letter from the VISA office of TAU international:  Dear Students, We wanted to let you know that there are no longer any automatic extensions of student visas. If your visa officially expired in September 2022 and onwards, it is most likely no longer valid. If you need to extend your visa, please make sure to fill out the following form. https://forms.monday.com/forms/6066d621e0591bb9e2007473c1807ece?r=use1 Please note we have many students who need our assistance, and we are dependent on the Ministry of Interior for appointment dates, so it might take a few weeks to handle your request.  Your patience is highly appreciated, and we will do our best to assist as soon as possible. Wishing you a happy and healthy 2023, Best, Visa Desk Team Also, according to the last information we got, there are some new rules: It is NO longer possible to shift from the Tourist Visa to the Student Visa once you are in Israel. The visa must be obtained from the Israeli embassy in...