More Respect Needed for Campus Workers

Feliz Moreno
THE SANTA CLARA
February 13, 2014

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen I take a moment to think about more than just my own problems, I tend to notice the people who often go about their jobs everyday without getting recognized or thanked by a majority of the student body.

For instance, the Facility Deptartment workers and the landscapers who arrive on campus in the wee hours of the morning to keep our campus looking beautiful hardly ever get noticed by the students. 

The people who work the front desk in the Cowell Health Center have always been friendly to me, and I don’t think I have ever thanked them for their kindness and patience.

Even though everyone has a lot on their plates during the school year, we should all do this more often.

I really can’t thank them enough after all of my missed appointments, vague requests to be seen and spur-of-the-moment demand for Band-Aids. They deal with sick students who are learning how to be responsible for their own health, and I have no doubt we get irritating from time to time.

Speaking of irritating, let’s talk about how much the Benson Memorial Center workers have to put up with — meeting all of our very specific food requests, dealing with drunk students who are either too indecisive or too incoherent to be ordering food and getting yelled at when they get an order wrong during the busy periods between classes.

I know if I worked behind the counters in Benson, I would not have the patience to put up with students who act like spoiled children. I appreciate the Benson employees for doing what I know I wouldn’t have the patience to do.

I also wish we appreciated our Chartered Student Organization leaders more. They are the ones who carry the large organizations on campus. I think very few people realize how difficult it is to spend an entire year overseeing a print, social or student government organization while serving as a representative of the student body.

It is simultaneously a hellish limbo to work hard as both a student and campus staff member, while getting paid maybe a quarter of what you deserve.

How many of us make the effort to appreciate the librarians who help with our research? Or the department office managers who process all of the paperwork? Or how about the people in human resources who distribute paychecks every month? I’m not talking about just saying “thank you.” I’m talking about sending a Christmas card or flowers after you graduate to remind them that what they do makes a difference. Because it does. 

Outside of the Santa Clara Community Action Program’s Labor Action Committee, the Community Facilitators and a few other small groups on campus, I always wonder why nobody makes an effort to show appreciation for those who clean our dorm bathrooms everyday.

As a campus, we should show our appreciation because it is demonstrative of our values as a community. The university should create a campus-wide worker appreciation or celebration day, if only to force us all to pause a moment and think about all the people who work to make campus so functional and beautiful.

Feliz Moreno is a senior English Major.