While I am not against the living wage, I can't help but feel impatient and a bit disgusted with the Living Wage Campaign. I found myself gritting my teeth when I walked past the ever-growing group of weak-looking hunger strikers and other comfortably privileged students in search of a cause. While I'm impressed with their determination and happy to see the spirit of dissent at our University, it seems the campaign would be much more effective, and much less divisive, if it accepted the realities of the current economy and worked within those realities to make a positive difference.
No one can disagree that it is impossible to adequately support a family, or even oneself, on $10.65 an hour. Realizing this, I am dubious that attacking the administration to raise pay by $2.35 an hour is the best way to improve things.
According to the campaign's website, "For the University to pay all direct employees a wage of $13 an hour the Budget Office would have to reallocate between 4.2 to 5.8 million dollars, which is 0.18%-0.24%, less than a quarter of a percent of U.Va.'s $2.487 billion annual budget." Even if we are to trust these numbers, just how would the University "reallocate" $5 million dollars? Perhaps it is a tiny percentage of the University's annual budget, but it is $5 million dollars just the same, and I am sure there are dozens of other worthy causes at the University which could use an extra $5 million. And as for those employees currently making upwards of $13 per hour including job advancement opportunities or further training, should their salaries be upped according to the new standard? Doing this would make the $4.2 to 5.8 million figure much, much higher; not doing it would lead to many bitter and dissatisfied workers.
The whole idea of a "living wage" - the average wage needed to support a family of two parents, two kids - seems oversimplified. Where does "need" begin and end? When does one have "enough"? In an unrelated conversation with a classmate recently I learned he works for University Transit Service. "I drive a bus," he said, "and I don't even get paid a living wage." If he had a wife and two kids, would he have the right to demand that his salary be raised above that of other, single bus drivers? I myself used to work for Aramark at the University. Should I have been paid less than the full-time employees because I did not rely on that job as a means of supporting myself?
We generally accept that every other restaurant and retail location pays workers something under a "living wage," because that's the economy. Where, then, did the idea come from that a university has to be held to different standards which don't mesh with the realities of the world just down the street? The idea that the University stands as a moral pillar, an exemplar of goodness and - the worst - anything preceded by the adjective "Jeffersonian," is idealistic and unrealistic. Our public university also relies on private funding, and has to be run something like a business to allow it to continue providing a vast pool of resources. I certainly don't agree with all of the University's budget decisions - hello, South Lawn - but I also don't claim to understand the intricacies of how this huge institution operates.
In lieu of raging against the administration, University students could, for example, find out what underpaid University employees most need and fundraise or organize food drives to help meet those needs. They could volunteer as baby-sitters or tutors for those employees who cannot afford childcare. Clubs and Greek organizations could "adopt" the families of struggling University employees and use their own means and ingenuity to better that families' circumstances. If everyone who went on a hunger strike - or better yet, who signed the campaign's petition - participated in these activities, it might very well prove more helpful than the extra $100 or so a week that a pay increase of $10.65 to $13 per hour represents, and with no repercussions to any other part of the University. Change may start with voicing opinions, but at some point there is a choice between passively supporting a popular view and actually doing something to better another person's life.
I know that because I voice my views against the campaign, there are a number of people who will sign me off as an unfeeling conservative with a Rick Santorum sticker plastered on to my car. I wish that, beyond this specific issue, we could get past the group mentality that is hostile to any opinion which goes against the majority - or one of the two majorities - and instead seek more realistic, more creative solutions to the problems we see.
Allison Geller is a fourth year in the College.
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