By Crystal Olague || Staff Writer
If you’re a college student, you may understand the importance of having a job, especially a job that pays well. Unfortunately, many students don’t have the time to work off campus, so they settle for an on-campus job to make it work with their busy schedules. The only issue is… on-campus jobs pay $8. This is an issue for many reasons.
Firstly, most students who choose to work on-campus don’t really have much of a choice when it comes to finding a job. We all need jobs because we wouldn’t really be able to survive without some sort of income, which forces thousands of students on campus to look for a job. However, it’s crucial to recognize that these on-campus jobs should provide an inclusive and unbiased work environment. This involves responsibilities such as opposing superior’s biases to ensure fair treatment and opportunities for all students in their pursuit of employment on campus.
This brings us to the second issue with on campus jobs. There are only so many jobs on campus, and even with the numerous jobs available, there are still so many people who are unable to find one here. Not to mention, it is difficult to make a schedule around your classes and other commitments you have to attend. For people who are involved in multiple clubs, have more than one lab, or just have really long school days it is so hard to find a job that they can work more than twice a week to make a sufficient paycheck.
That brings me to my last point. Paying students $8 an hour is a terrible idea. The student workers of this school do so much work, such as athletics workers, tutors, and OSPGD workers. With these types of jobs, the workers do so much for the F&M community in different ways and some of these workers do not get recognition for their work. There is also a limit to how many hours we are able to work. This limits student workers so much because even if they do find a job that works with their hours, they still cannot work a large amount of hours because of school rules.
As someone who spends virtually all of their free time working in the equipment room at our athletics center, scores a handful of the numerous home games, and acts as a student manager for one of the teams here, I can safely say that student workers deserve more than $8 an hour. Now don’t get me wrong, I love working in the athletics center and I love the experience and exposure that I am getting from this job, but the amount of work we all put into our jobs is not reflected in our paychecks. This isn’t supposed to be a cry for sympathy, but simply a way to give a voice to those who can’t speak out for themselves.
The main problem with raising wages for student workers is that it would most likely result in the school either getting rid of a lot of jobs on campus or cutting down the amount of hours people can work in order to support this switch. This wouldn’t be good in the sense that it would limit the amount of people who are able to get jobs on campus, putting them in a bad spot financially. And yes, it is easy to find an off-campus job, but once again, some people do not have the time in their busy schedules to make this work for them, and international students, unfortunately, are not allowed to work off-campus. This is such a difficult issue to find a solution to because every alternative has its own downsides that could end up being worse than the current situation. For one of the most expensive schools in Pennsylvania, we have an extremely low pay rate that should be higher considering the amount of money most of us are paying to be here. One day, I hope we can get to a point where we can pay students a decent wage without having other disadvantages.
Crystal Olague is a Staff Writer. Her email is colague@fandm.edu.