At Convocation every August, Harvard University’s leaders begin the year by promising a community in which all members are respected and valued for the work they do. Unfortunately, for many dining hall workers today, that promise has not fully rung true. As former student body leaders at Harvard, we declare our solidarity with dining staff fighting for dignity in the workplace, a fair wage, and affordable healthcare for their families.
Harvard’s dining workers contribute tirelessly to the university, and to its students in particular. During our tenures, blizzards cancelled classes and left Boston’s streets practically impassable on multiple occasions, and a manhunt shut down the city following the Boston Marathon bombing. Remarkably, dining workers braved the icy weather and unsafe streets to keep our dining halls running. They created a comforting environment in our dorms when panic swept the city. Many even slept overnight in dorm common spaces due to these emergencies, despite having children and other loved ones waiting for them back home. And every day still, they go the extra mile to make our dining halls feel like a home kitchen for all of us. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call them some of Boston’s unsung heroes.
Harvard thus must see these staff as students see them: as more than just employees, and as essential to the university’s educational mission. The transformative learning and growth that Harvard delivered for us was in no small part thanks to the people who literally nourished us. Dining workers welcomed us to campus and made it feel like our home. We understand their roles not just as workers, but as mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers—and in many cases, as primary breadwinners supporting their families. The Harvard we know and love would never shortchange such integral members of our community.
Their requests are more than reasonable. Starting with healthcare, under Harvard’s proposed plan, a worker’s family could end up spending $4,800 out-of-pocket for health expenses—16% of the family’s income if the sole earner is the dining worker making $30,000. This expense exceeds three times the maximum that family would ever pay out-of-pocket on the Mass Connector 2A plan, which they would receive for free if Harvard offered no plan. When the university reduced healthcare benefits to faculty members and teaching staff in 2014, outrage ensued. Harvard’s dining hall workers earn substantially less than its teaching staff, so the university’s plan would prove even more burdensome on them.
The refrain we’ve heard from administrators concerning wages deflects criticism: other institutions pay their dining staff even less, so why should Harvard pay more? Frankly, we find this excuse disappointing. Other universities’ worse examples do not justify the inadequate status quo. When the annual living wage expenses for a single-parent, single-child family in the Boston area are $55,895, Harvard shouldn’t be compensating its employees barely half that, regardless of what other universities do.
Basic healthcare and fair pay for staff should be non-negotiable priorities at every college—regardless of annual endowment performance. If Harvard, the world’s wealthiest university, refuses to provide its workers satisfactory compensation and health benefits, what message does that send to universities, students, and workers across America? What lesson does that teach Harvard’s own undergraduates, who are urged by the Dean of the College “to be idealists”?
Harvard has an opportunity to lead here. Its actions will set an example for educational institutions worldwide and demonstrate the university’s values to its students, alumni, and the public. Upon graduation, we were instructed to help fulfill the mission of the university by being generous, compassionate, and empathetic—or in the words of Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust, to lead lives “as good as they are great.” Today, we urge our alma mater to be good—to support its dining hall workers.
Sietse Goffard, Senan Ebrahim, Tara Raghuveer, Johnny Bowman, Dhruv Goyal, Pratyusha Yalamanchi, Gus Mayopoulos, Danny Bicknell, Jen Zhu, and Bonnie Cao all wrote this piece jointly. They served as the student body presidents and vice-presidents at Harvard University, representing the classes of 2011 through 2016.