I’m befuddled. If you missed the news about faculty, staff, and grad students being asked to volunteer as food service workers at Michigan State University, you can give yourself a little background with these gems: “MSU asks faculty, staff to volunteer in dining halls” and “Faculty asked to volunteer in dining halls amid continuing staff shortage.” I know I’ve been away for a bit, but apparently things have changed quite a bit since I have been gone. I need to get out from the misapprehension that faculty are employed to teach and do research rather than to serve as volunteer hashslingers. I respect the people who fed me in college dining halls for four years; a few of them were the greatest people you might ever hope to meet. I also respect them enough to thing that having PhD volunteers come in to supplement them is kind of a dis.
If I’m befuddled, it seems that the people who are more confused than I are the ones who manage the food service industry. By all accounts, it seems that they are having a really tough time grasping why people might be leaving that rather thankless set of jobs like Billy Zane trying to get off the Titanic. COVID exposure, abusive customers, bad hours, dirty work, low pay. None of these could possibly contribute to a labor shortage. Addressing these issues via volunteer staffing is just about the ultimate in the practice of denial.
If you have been to college, you know that, as far as student work goes, working in food service is a ubiquitous opportunity. You also know that it’s not the most desirable. If you have been to prison, you know that it’s exactly the same way! The main difference is that, in prison, you get paid even less and disrespected even more. A secondary difference is that, in prison, someone occasionally tries to tell you that working in prison food service for 11 cents an hour might prepare you for a career when you are released.
It’s clearly evident that prison food service prepared you for nothing when Michigan State is asking their volunteers to complete a criminal background check before NOT getting paid to work a thankless job. I’m nearly at a loss for words. You want me to do something for you in return for nothing but a potentially good conscience on my part, and yet you would reject my attempt at altruism because I have a prior conviction. Some people are good enough to do good deeds, but others can just get the hell out. What crimes am I going to commit while standing at a steam table? I’d like to have the imagination of those who speculate that something untoward might happen and so they need to guard against it. Moreover, why would I, as faculty, staff or grad students already ensconced at MSU, submit myself to a criminal background check? If a dive into my history is prerequisite for working at MSU in the first place, as the volunteer requirement implies, would I already be “clean?” And if I’m somehow in the MSU community and I do have a criminal background, why would I expose that to people who, very clearly, have a bias against that. Would Food Service use it just to disqualify me from volunteer efforts, or would they then take that info and spread it all over the campus in ways that are going to be detrimental to my employment? How stupid would I have to be to work for free and have that be the thing that gets me fired? Moreover, if you have the time to run background checks on people, you probably could better spend that time working on the front lines rather than asking others do cover that duty for you. I get don’t get it. How can allegedly educational institutions be so fucking stupid? Actually I do get it. It’s pretty much the same attitude that allowed institutions supposedly dedicated to reform and rehabilitation to do neither of those things.
Of course the person who fronted this idea for MSU, the VP for residential and dining services, makes over $300,000 a year. Well, executives and professionals need to be well compensated, right? So does everybody else. As for those wealthy faculty who could give up a little of their time for the greater good, $300,000 is a dream figure that, I would estimate, about 98% of MSU faculty will never be able to reach when it comes to their pay checks. And last I checked, MSU is an educational institution and not a restaurant. But I guess professors of Spanish aren;t going to come close to making the football coach’s salary, either. Priorities.
There’s so much to belabor on this topic that I’m almost sad to stop here. However, it’s better simply to try to digest this little bit of cultural gristle than might off any more.