The Lawrence University Community Council (LUCC) is preparing to launch a Student Compensation Task Force to investigate the compensation and wages of student workers at Lawrence University.
The members of the task force currently include junior Anders Hanhan, President of LUCC; sophomore Isabel Dorn, Vice President of LUCC; junior Matthew Pavlik, LUCC Community Relations Coordinator; and the two co-chairs of the LUCC Student Welfare Committee, sophomores Audari Tamayo and Jack Stuart. According to Dorn and Hanhan, three class representatives have been chosen to become members of the committee: junior Rowan Tipping, sophomore Hayden Young and sophomore Cormac Billick.
Pavlik feels that the wages student workers earn do not reflect well on the university. He also believes that this way of thinking ignores the reality that many students need to work campus jobs to continue being able to pay for school.
“The purpose of the task force is to have conversations with various administrators on campus to look at why wages are so low and what the school can do to increase them,” said Pavlik. “Or at least learning why the school is doing [little to address] them.”
Lawrence student workers are not allowed to work more than 20 hours a week, and most jobs pay less than $10 per hour. That is a maximum of $200 per week if a student maxes out their timesheet. Dorn feels that this amount is significantly less than the cost of attendance for most students and wants to see students able to leave Lawrence without crippling amounts of debt.
“My goal is to achieve a living wage for all Lawrence students so they can leave Lawrence in a state of financial empowerment, rather than drowning in debt,” Dorn said.
Hanhan noted that the average wage of student workers on campus does not meet the minimum wage required to satisfy the cost of living in Outagamie County, which according to M.I.T. is $14 per hour, which is four dollars higher than Lawrence’s highest-paid student workers. This assessment does not include Community Advisors (CAs), whose payment is based on a stipend and functions slightly differently.
“While we understand the school’s budgetary limitations, incorporating compensation into university planning will be crucial,” Hanhan said.
Hanhan believes that increasing student wages will also foster a healthy residential community model and help the university save money by avoiding expensive contract labor.
According to Stuart, the task force has not formally met yet to discuss a clear path of action that all the members of the task force agree on. However, the task force will start its work soon. According to Pavlik, the task force will be active until the end of next academic year’s Fall Term, when it will report its findings.