Harvard’s dining hall workers have just recently returned to their jobs after going on a long strike against the administration. The staff protested insufficient wages, along with the rising price of out-of-pocket healthcare.
The university settled on an agreement that raised the dining hall workers’ salaries from $33,800 to $35,000 a year. Harvard also agreed not to make any changes to the healthcare plan in the first two years of a five-year deal.
Although Harvard’s dining hall staff expressed satisfaction towards the outcome of the strike, the demonstration leaves a myriad of unanswered questions in its wake. Around the world, Harvard is revered as the crème de la crème of higher education institutions, both in terms of prestige and wealth. Harvard receives a yearly endowment of over $35 billion – that’s the largest endowment of any private institution. How is it that richest university can’t afford to pay its workers a living wage?
The incident at Harvard sheds light on an otherwise shadowy subject: how a university administration distributes its wealth. Within every higher level institution lies a scary paradox – the students pour in billions of dollars’ worth of tuition, but the people working to maintain the students’ standard of living can barely manage to scrape by. Highly respected professors receive both recognition and a hefty paycheck, whereas the dining hall staff, who toil tirelessly both on the job and after hours, get treated like dirt. The gap between the rich and the poor is widening rapidly on college campus across the nation – quick, highly publicized fixes such as this one aren’t enough to resolve the larger issue at hand.
So what exactly should universities do to alleviate the issue? First and foremost, they’re being asked to take a more humane approach when dealing with low-wage workers. The ultimate goal of institutions like Harvard is to educate America’s youth so that it’s well equipped to make the world a better place post-graduation. Today’s college students will graduate and go on to become medics, scientists, lawyers, and politicians – people with the skills to help those who need it most. It’s hypocritical and unjust for universities to pride themselves on these honorable pursuits while simultaneously turning a blind eye to their own staff members. It’s a university’s responsibility to involve itself in the personal lives of its employees, regardless of income.
The same principles apply to Bucknell’s community. Bucknellians – professors, administrators, and students alike – should make an active effort to give the university staff the respect it deserves. One of the redeeming qualities of the strikes at Harvard was the student body’s willingness to support the dining hall workers; hundreds of students actively stood with the staff, walking out of classes and holding sit-ins in the administrative building where the agreement was eventually made. To generate positive change on college campuses, all it really takes is an awareness of the issues at hand and the motivation to do something about it.