Gravy Train

When the Bureau of Financial Aid sends out its yearly offers of scholarships and loans, an added enticement is often the promise of assured College employment. Most of the available jobs, a freshman soon learns, are those of bus boy in the dining halls. And he learns more as he checks in to begin his duties, running pans of food between kitchen and serving table. He finds that there are generally high school boys from Cambridge working with him, doing exactly the same jobs. But while the College student is paid eighty cents an hour and is charged for his meals, his town colleague receives ninety-four cents plus a free dinner.

This wage difference is a bit puzzling to the freshman worker. If he inquires at Lehman Hall, Dining hall officials speak of the old days when students were allowed to leave work before the final clean-up. For this privilege, they were docked in pay and lost a free meal. Though this concession to study has long since disappeared, the inequity lingers on. And the officials justify their inaction with worthy sentiments about not wishing a cut in the wages of town boys. The College workers, of course, do not advocate such a cut, either. Ninety-four cents an hour plus a meal is a fair wage for the busboy job. The student merely wants his pay raised to this approved level.

The dining halls have been juggling their budget in the last few years, ending the past year with a substantial loss. Student wages cannot be kept unfairly low, however, merely to cut corners. Paying the College workers less than the Cambridge boys who do the same work is an economy measure the dining halls cannot afford.