The message delivered by Felipe Polanco ’01 to an audience of senators seemed to sum up the frustrations of many student advocates, myself included.

“Money. The administration’s motivation is always money,” said Polanco on Sunday night.

During his time at Fairfield, administrators made the controversial decision to fire the in-house janitorial staff in favor of hiring an independent contractor. This contractor would then hire the same fired workers for lower wages, fewer benefits and no tuition reimbursement program, which all University staff receive. Janitors were also not allowed to unionize.

This hurtful action appeared to students, including Polanco, to be in direct conflict with Jesuit ideals and basic human rights, so they organized protests. These ranged from letter-writing all the way to sit-ins and a hunger strike, all of which lasted over a period of several years. Their actions eventually convinced administration to compensate the staff fairly.

Though Polanco’s experience relates primarily to the undercutting of wages and benefits for staff by previous administrators, the same undertones resonate through many issues facing students at Fairfield today – not just in the administration’s motivation, but also in the methods and tactics students face in approaching these problems.

Polanco told the senators about how, in his experiences, those in power tried to delay students in their efforts, sending them through hoop after hoop to simply arrange meetings with those at the top of the administration, those who could actually make decisions to affect the change students were seeking.

Administrators would hope, Polanco explained, that those who were pushing for change would graduate and be out of their hair before anything was actually addressed.

And a recent situation has followed suit.

When a group of FUSA senators led by Tim Rich ’08 and Mike Meehan ’08 tried to address the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the OCB lottery in early December by writing a detailed letter to Dean of Students Tom Pellegrino, they were only one semester from graduation.

Accordingly, we shouldn’t have been shocked to see, almost a full month’s delay later, a letter referring these students right back to the same committee that had just referred them to the dean. This committee, without the decision-making power of a dean, could be of no help to Rich and Meehan’s pleas on behalf of the rising senior class.

The money at the root of releasing students off campus is easy to see: Another student on campus means another seven or eight thousand dollars of housing revenue­ – triples be damned. Yes, there are lots of fixed overhead costs to cover, but planned overcrowding is not a long-term solution.

This same focus on money appears in many quality-of-life issues for the Fairfield student.

What about your woefully outdated StagWeb account that takes six hours to receive an e-mail? Unfortunately, there’s no money in the budget for that.

Looking to use a pull-down machine in the weight room? The budget has no room for these repairs, either.

I understand that there’s a limited amount of money in the budget here at Fairfield; spending more in one area would result in fewer funds for another budget line. In order to stay solvent, the University must closely control both costs and revenues.

The costs the administration should be most concerned about, however, aren’t housing costs or maintenance, but rather labor. As health care and other benefits continue to increase in price, the ever-increasing amount of mid-level bureaucratic staff and administration throughout the University can’t be helping the budget, can it?

Though I’ll be graduating in only a few weeks, I can’t help but take some of Felipe Polanco’s message to heart, as any student advocate should, and reiterate it here.

Drastic action, such as Polanco’s hunger strike, may be effective only if all other methods of advocacy have been exhausted. Dialogue through letters, marches and protests are all important steps to bring positive attention to any student issue ­­- to “stick it to them,” as Polanco put it.

With the OCB issue, the letters have already been written throughout this academic year.

The next steps, then, are for the underclassmen to decide if they want this issue to continue its progress.

As for me and my classmates, we’ll be out of the administration’s hair in a few short weeks, right according to plan.

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