Go Hungry Challenge: Lack of Dining Staff

It is not a secret that many students here are breaking the bank to attend this school. With such a fact, one would suspect that the school is making plenty to meet not only the students’ needs, but also the staff as well.

This assumption though would be misguided. The current administration is not focused on feeding students, paying the staff a living wage, or even attempting to address it. For the first time in my tenure at St. Lawrence, I was shocked by the blatant disrespect the administration is currently showing. My fellow students and I were annoyed to find that many of our issues of waiting, lack of food, or just lack of options are due to staffing is- sues. More so, a staffing issue the administration is choosing to ignore.

Two years ago, when the world and campus were amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, it was understandable that there may have been a staffing shortage, most notably the time-out café in Newell and Spartacus in The Kirk Douglass Hall. Dana and The Pub ran under normal circumstances, with the only caveat being that the Pub was not open as late as it was pre COVID. Now that COVID has settled down and things have gone back to the way they were before COVID, Dana Dining Hall and the Pub are having staffing shortages, along with Time-Out café rarely being open and the Spartacus Café in Kirk rarely being open, or only being open certain days for specific hours.

This does not even mention the Johnson Grab and Go, which has been closed for the majority of the COV- ID years, and as far as I know, has not reopened because of staffing issues. It is one thing to have staffing shortages during the pandemic, but now that most of the worry is behind us, we should not be having these issues. Since we are still having these staffing issues across all the dining options on campus, you must wonder why, and look towards wages and a possibility as to why the school cannot hire people. Likely because they will not pay fair wages for their employees in the food department.

On campus, there are plenty of students voicing their opinions, although there is more calling into question where our money is going. How can St.

Lawrence, a school that preaches philosophical equality among almost everything, fail to pay its own staff a living wage? I call on the administration to fix this issue and truly live up to the concepts they preach. However, John is still here at Dana, so at least the students have that to look forward to when going to Dana for lunch.