Op Ed: UVA Now Pays $15/hr, Why Can’t WashU?

Kendall Glennon

I am a graduate student at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and I work
three jobs in order to support myself. Working anywhere from 30-50 hours each week has
interfered with my schoolwork. I work overnight shifts, which is really my only time to do
homework. However, by staying up to do school work, I am clearly missing out on much needed
sleep to keep my brain at its peak. At Washington University, which claims to “be a place where
you can push the boundaries of what it means to learn,” I am forced to shortchange my learning
and wellbeing because of my economic uncertainty.

Washington University, an $8.5 billion institution, should follow the trend of its peer institutions
and raise its minimum wage to a living wage. On March 7th, 2019, the University of Virginia
(UVA) became the most recent school to announce it was increasing its minimum wage to $15
an hour. In a message to the university, UVA’s President Jim Ryan stated “As a university, we
should live our values—and part of that means making sure that no one who works at UVA
should live in poverty.” Duke University, which announced it would be raising its minimum wage
in 2017, will have a $15/hr minimum in effect starting July 2019. Other peer institutions,
including the University of California system, the University of Chicago, and Princeton have
already raised their campus minimum wages to $15/hr or will be doing so shortly as a result of
state measures.

In August 2018, Washington University announced the end of its Leading Together fundraising
campaign, which brought in a “record-breaking $3.38 billion dollars.” $1.26 billion went to the
University’s endowment and $297 million went to “provide deans and the chancellor with flexible
funds to address urgent needs.” Washington University, a tax-exempt institution with such an
immense endowment and disposable funds, has the moral responsibility to care for its workers.
A living wage on campus directly responds to workers’ urgent needs.

Increasing the minimum wage would mean that I would not need to work the three jobs I
currently do. Adjusting to graduate school has been difficult because as an undergrad my tuition
also covered housing and my course schedule was quite different. In college I had one class at
a time, so I would go to the same class Monday through Friday for 3.5 weeks. There were two
slots allotted for class from 9-11am and 1-3pm, but most professors rarely kept us for more than
2 or 3 hours a day. With the set schedule, everyone always had time to work, do homework, or
socialize after 3pm each day. Between courses we would have a 5-day break to relax, work,
catch up on sleep, etc. before transitioning to our next class. This allowed for a quite rigorous
curriculum; however, we could fully immerse ourselves in each course and do work without the
distraction of other coursework or other assignments.

I have always been a hard worker and wanted to work whether it was necessary or not. I have
worked since I was 15 years old, but never more than one job. Since coming to the Brown
School, I have found that in order to pay my bills on top of tuition and other expenses in my life,
I need to work many hours while being a full-time student. I applied for a position at the Gary M.
Sumers Recreation Center in the hopes that an on-campus job would make it easier to juggle
with my class schedule because of the convenience of being on campus and near where I live.
However, with the student worker wage set at $9 along with the lack of hours offered, I needed
to find other sources of income. Since moving to St. Louis in August, I have had 4 jobs one of
which I no longer have due to its hours interfering with my school work. If Washington University
raised its minimum wage, I would be able to let one of my three jobs go and have more time to
focus on my academics. My monetary stress when bills come would decrease and I would be
able to focus more energy into my career and my personal well-being.

UVA, a school with a similar endowment to Washington University’s, has committed to

upholding its institutional values. It’s time for our university to do the same and implement a
$15/hour minimum wage on campus for all workers.