Alumni Stories

My name is Sigal Felber '21 (she/her) and I am majoring in American Studies and Religious Studies. Many of my academic interests relate to the search for a sense of place and belonging in America, and in my time outside of class I help lead The Rural Cause, Ransom Ultimate Frisbee, and Kenyon College YDSA. As a work study student, I knew I would get a job upon coming to Kenyon. However, I had no idea how difficult it would be to find a job. Even after I managed to find a job, I still struggled to meet my work study grant allotment, which is why I worked at multiple places. Over the past three years, I worked at Phonathon, the Math and Science Skills Center, the Student Accessibility office, and the Library.
While I primarily sought out these jobs as a source of supplemental income, only over the past summer did I truly get to know my coworkers and find greater purpose as a student worker through organizing K-SWOC. Student workers like myself are undervalued and our labor is not recognized as critical by the College. A common refrain among K-SWOC organizers is that they need us more than we need them. Kenyon talks a big game about community, and much of what they say is true, but I want to be clear that it is the students who create this community. This applies to Kenyon student workers as well. In identifying weaknesses within the work study grant system, the student employment job search, and even discrepancies with our wages, I found a community of student workers. While I only have one year left at Kenyon, I now know that I will graduate knowing what it means to be part of a Kenyon community, and that community is K-SWOC.
**Sigal Felber ‘21, Research and Reference desk**

My name is Dan. I am a student, active community member, and student worker at Kenyon. I study Political Science and Public Policy, and I plan to pursue public service when I graduate in order to fight for the causes that matter to me. At Kenyon, I started the Rural Cause, a campus initiative to strengthen the College's ties to its place in rural, central Ohio through education, support, and action. So far, we have engaged hundreds of community members, brought attention to the reality of rural life, and even lobbied the administration to create a student employee position devoted to rural initiatives. That same passion led me to join K-SWOC.
Right now, I am an Admissions Fellow, but I also worked as a Tour Guide and as a Dishwasher at the Kenyon Inn. In each of these jobs, I wished I had a better way to advocate for myself (and my coworkers). An email or a closed-door conversation with the boss is not enough. It only leads to a difference in my individual condition, even though my coworkers and I want the same things, like fair wages, guaranteed hours, and job security.
Organizing with K-SWOC made me realize that we all need a better means to advocate for ourselves, and to do so as a collective. We need a student worker union. It’s not only about want and need, but about what we deserve. Student workers are essential workers, too. In Admissions, for instance, we literally bring in incoming classes! We give tours, sit on panels, and host prospective students. We can make a high schooler go from a wavering commitment to early decision, just from giving our perspectives as students. Our perspective is not just necessary: it is essential.
K-SWOC is a fundamental demand to the College to recognize us for our worth. A student worker union gives us a seat at the negotiating table. It gives us the power to set the terms of our employment, and it protects that power. More than anything else, I want a student worker union so students can start fighting for each other, together. Not a council; not a committee; only our union will get us there.
Dan Napsha ‘21, Admissions & Kenyon Inn

My name is Courtney Felle (she/they), and I’m a senior American Studies major, English minor, and Public Policy concentrator. I’ve been a student worker in the Admissions Office since the spring of my first year, when I started as a campus tour guide. Since then, I’ve also worked as a specialty tour guide, a Peirce Peers (lunch buddies) coordinator, an Overnight Hosting Chair, and a Senior Fellow.
I’ve had the opportunity to take on a lot of different responsibilities in Admissions and talk with so many other student workers, staff, and prospective students who are passionate about Kenyon. On the best days, the kindness, excitement, and knowledge I come across while working in Admissions remind me why I came to Kenyon. But when so many students rely on their wages to support themselves and pay Kenyon’s high tuition costs, having an enjoyable workplace isn’t enough.
We need workplaces that are intentionally equitable in paying fair wages, guaranteeing a fair number of hours, and supporting students’ needs. There have been weeks when I’ve worked over 20 hours in Admissions; there have also been weeks when I’ve worked less than two. Though my boss tries to provide stability, the burden can’t fall on student workers to individually ask for the scheduling changes or extra hours they need. When so many students are experiencing the same fluctuations, we need to improve the system at the heart of how hours and wages are distributed.
I am also a student with a chronic illness, and I want to make sure that student workers with disabilities and illnesses are included and valued in their workplaces and in the Kenyon community overall. Despite its values of inclusion and connection, many aspects of Kenyon are still inaccessible, and the push toward better resources for students, faculty, staff, and visitors with disabilities is slow. In empowering students to advocate for each other, a student workers’ union can counter the ableism that continues to exist in workplace structures and policies. I support K-SWOC because all student workers deserve “equitable access to opportunity” through “a sense of full belonging and the tools to reach their full potential,” just as the Kenyon mission statement promises. It’s time to make that promise a reality.
**Courtney Felle ‘21, Admissions**

There are many things I’ve learned from being at Kenyon the past four years. Some of them are good, like learning what my interests are and what kind of people I like to surround myself with. And some of them are bad, like the administration taking advantage of underprivileged student workers simply because we are vulnerable and have no other options. After-all, you’d think being 100% residential would mean providing students with sufficient employment opportunities, right? As a science tour guide, I used to think I was lucky because I was getting paid to talk about the school that I love, but the hours just weren’t there. So, I added another job working as an office worker in the admissions office. This helped a little, but then the pandemic struck and my job was gone. Where was the support that the Kenyon administration keeps preaching about? I started this spring semester with three jobs, two of which were at Kenyon. The sucky thing is I couldn’t leave any of my jobs because this previous year was a living hell and my family just couldn’t afford it. I couldn't afford it. I didn’t take these jobs because of their academic contribution to my future, but because of their financial contribution to my life now. I’m broke. I’ll repeat that. I am broke. Kenyon has robbed me of my money, my time, and my mental health, and in return has given me unfair wages, and two degrees: one that I can’t use without further education, and one in insomnia. (Why sleep when you can hear the 1% play devil’s advocate?) Kenyon students need a union because the administration doesn't care. They don’t care that students are being taken advantage of. They don’t care that we are students first and the stress of increased tuition every year is something we carry with us into finals week. They don’t care about the way we are treated by our employers, by campus safety, and by our environment. And we can’t expect them to start caring when they have shown us time and time again by lying to us about door flanges and refusing to listen to us begging for help. We need a union because over 100 student workers politely sending an email to President Decatur about issues in their job isn’t feasible. You don’t politely email for change, you make it happen. You demand it. Kenyon needs student workers, and student workers need a union. We deserve to be recognized. Our path, our union.
**Amna Tahir ‘21, Admissions**

We are living through an illuminating moment. Pre-existing systems of health and economic inequality, precarious but persistent, have in many cases been both exposed and exacerbated in the wake of the pandemic. This is clearly true in the case of the multiple economic and class disparities that continue to harm Kenyon’s students, workers, and the College itself.  
As an alumni who graduated the same year the New York Times revealed Kenyon then held the ominous distinction of enrolling the 8th most economically segregated student body in all of American higher education, I was not surprised to hear the college intended to respond by cutting vital retirement benefits for its staff and pay for its student workers. After all, this is the same college that tried to outsource essential unionized staff in 2012. But I wasn’t surprised that students and staff were successful in banding together to secure a fair deal for both. And I am proud to support these same students who are braving the risks to secure basic rights for themselves and their fellow workers by forming a student workers union.
As a labor organizer, I’ve witnessed first hand the unparalleled difference a union can make in the life of both an individual worker as well as an institution. Union representation can mean the difference between wrongful termination and fair compensation, between workplace harassment and a voice in worksite decisions. Without a union, for example, student workers returning to campus will have no formal say in how safety regulations and protocols are enforced in the workplace. But a union can also transform an institution, even an entire industry. A student workers’ union should prove a fitting if insufficient remedy to the structural inequities that have rendered Kenyon accessible only to an increasingly slimmer and increasingly wealthy proportion of prospective students.   
Kenyon has everything to gain by democratizing both its workplaces and its larger decision-making apparatus. By bringing students and workers into the fold - by giving them a real seat at the table - Kenyon might stand a chance of not just patching but meaningfully redressing its longstanding history of elitism and classism. This administration has an opportunity to remake the College’s values and mission from branding material into actual commitments by recognizing the Kenyon Student Workers Union. As an alumni community, we should follow the lead of the students and workers who have fought for one another’s livelihoods and support this effort in every way we can.
Michael Cusack (he/him) ’17, former American Studies Major, Union Organizer.

My name is Jonathan Hernández (he/him/his) and I’m a Community Advisor in the class of 2021. I’m known for being that guy who yells at games and performances louder than anyone else, especially when everyone else is silent. I’m known as the guy you can call randomly at 3 am in the morning, and who will meet you wherever you need me to because I’m always ready to talk. I’ve sent out Psychology study guides that my peers and I have suffered over together, and led Queer Masculinities meetings where we’ve had amazing Walmart dinners. I’ve tried out a lot of different sports, clubs, talks, etc. not because I’m noncommittal, but because I’m committed to my friends and the community around me.
I want to take this moment to stress that I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to be at Kenyon and incredibly grateful to be a Community Advisor. I mean, I’m a first generation, queer, student of color; I had no idea how to navigate the first year of college. I had no idea how to navigate a life on my own, rejection from my family, or the dip into mental health challenges, and honestly neither did my parents. During my first year, I leaned heavily on kind and pragmatic people. It’s only now that I am a CA do I realize that most of them were CA’s. CA’s are an absolutely integral part of Kenyon’s social and academic life. We quite literally work in the best interest our peers, from having difficult conversations about discrimination and Title IX, to making difficult calls to campus safety in Good Samaritan situations.
Kenyon wouldn’t be able to operate without the Community Advisors because the student body wouldn’t have other, regular students to advocate for them. It would become very apparent very quickly just how disconnected administration is from student life. Kenyon can hire people to police policy and they can hire people to create campus events. They can’t hire people to be our friends. And I support the Union because I’ve seen the power of people who care about each other standing up for each other.
The CAs got together and completed a VERY effective organized action to get a raise in pay. We also drafted our own contract and job description. Those documents haven’t been recognized by the office, which only highlights the reason that we need a Union. Kenyon loves saying we are a collaborative community, but when student workers bring up issues that they are knowledgeable about and are living through, we don’t get recognized. I personally am satisfied with my job. I personally am getting the money I need to help my family pay the bills; to help my single mother not worry about me, but I’m not the only student worker and a lot of us aren’t satisfied. I am standing with the Union because my friends are suffering and they need me to help guarantee job security, to get more transparency with administration, to fight the constant microaggressions from our managers, and so much more. I am standing with the Union because I don’t let my friends down.
**Jonathan Hernández ‘21, Community Advisor**

My name is Dani Martinez (she/her/hers) and I am a Senior English major, Music minor, and Latinx Studies concentrator here at Kenyon. I have worked behind the desk at LBIS Circulation since I was a first-year in 2018, and I was a student manager there in the fall of 2019. When I began working for LBIS Circulation about three years ago, I also began as co-director (and eventual editor and writer) for Kenyon’s first Spanish-language publication, A medio camino. Additionally, I’m an associate at the Kenyon Review and am involved in multiple music ensembles and theatrical productions on campus.
I have always loved the hands-on and social aspects of working at the circulation desk. People always need to check out materials, books, and other media in course reserves, and I have often been the one to check things out for them. My job granted me the ability to have engaging conversations with fellow students while handing them a book for class, check in with former professors, and meet other members of the community. Obviously, the pandemic has gotten in the way of those social aspects, specifically for the upperclassmen and other students who won’t be on campus this fall. Due to COVID, the former security that came with my job has been erased and has left me and other employees completely in the dust.
My relationship with my supervisor was not perfect before, but once a deadly pandemic became our reality, there has been an exponential decrease in the level of communication that has been given to me, a work-study student. No guarantee, clarity, or even closure about what is to come in the upcoming semester has been provided. As I mentioned, things were not perfect before. One major issue, as I have realized while thinking about my job in retrospect, is the unfair treatment of work-study students who are supposed to be given priority in the hiring process. When I was hired as a first-year, three full years before the COVID pandemic, I was only given access to the leftover hours not taken by upperclassmen. Because of this, I had to juggle my hours behind the circulation desk while adjusting to campus life as a first-year. As many college students know, the latter is hard enough as it is. I had assumed that I would be given some priority to hours as a work-study student, but I was absolutely not. But, because of the essential nature of my job at the library, I sat at the desk when maybe it would have been a more efficient night to be more focused on an essay for one of my classes.
Organizing with fellow students gives me the support system that was not granted to me when I first got my job and allows me and fellow Kenyon employees to recognize what has been unfair all along. The problems I faced when I was first hired could be nipped in the bud with the powerful and necessary impact of unionizing. This unionization has the potential to establish better communication, higher (and well-deserved) wages, fairer hours, prioritization of work-study students, paid sick leave, and an overall stabler work atmosphere that all Kenyon student employees deserve.
**Dani Martinez ‘21, LBIS Circulation Desk**

I knew that I wanted to be employed as a Community Advisor before I was accepted into college. My high school Spanish teacher had given my class a mini-lecture one day about how to budget for college without going into debt. To a class of low-middle income public high school upperclassmen, this frank conversation was one of the most important lessons we could have. One of the key elements in her plan for leaving college debt-free was becoming a residential advisor.
I entered Kenyon under the STEM scholarship, knowing both that the program would give me what I needed to succeed while making it financially feasible to attend. Later in my college career, while I no longer needed the job as a CA to afford to attend Kenyon, I knew that its record as one of the most well-paid jobs for students on campus would no doubt be helpful for me as I began to save for my future. I had fallen in love with Kenyon and saw how my CAs during my KEEP/STEM summer program had shaped my Kenyon experience. In the hopes that I could help to foster the same safe and supportive atmosphere, I eagerly applied and accepted a position as a CA starting in my sophomore year. I enjoyed the day to day duties of being a CA tremendously. I had my full share of sleepless nights on duty, filling out paperwork and staying late into breaks to complete health and safety inspections, but the hardships of the job were nothing compared to the reward of seeing my residents grow and growing in my role with a team of supportive fellow CAs. I watched my residents make friends, join clubs, struggle through first exams and essays, and find their places at Kenyon. Ultimately, what I found to be much more difficult than duty rounds or breaking up parties was the administrative role of my job.
The Office of Residential Life has seen huge rates of turnover in their senior staff over the past few years, making it increasingly difficult for Community Advisors to effectively do our jobs. I deeply believe that every member of the Office of Residential Life is supportive of every CA in their role, but when other concerns mount, the concerns of CAs can be left behind. This has become evident through the COVID-19 pandemic. I first learned that I would be asked to return to campus as a Senior CA along with the rest of the college during the July 15th Open Forum. It wasn't until later in the week that we officially heard back from The Office of Residential Life about the state of our jobs. This communication did nothing to describe how our jobs would function during a pandemic and gave us just 4 days to decide if we wanted to come back on campus in order to work.
I believe in this student union because I have seen the power of collective student action firsthand. We as CAs banded together to ask questions about our job functions and lobby for an increase in pay from Tier 2 to Tier 3 for work that is so essential to the college that they specifically asked upperclassmen CAs to return for the Fall semester. I was deeply saddened to turn down my job offer this semester. Even the increased wages and benefits awarded to CAs still won't cover the cost of room and board I will accrue by being on campus and I need to look out for the health of myself and my family. I don't believe that The Office of Residential Life or Kenyon College makes decisions in the hopes of being purposefully malicious, but during stressful times like the COVID-19 pandemic, the voices and concerns of student workers can go overlooked. It is my hope that I can return to my job in my Senior Spring semester with a body of student workers to support us so that we can most effectively do our jobs and serve our communities.
Sam ‘21, Community Advisor

My name is Kindra Fontes-May, and I am part of the Kenyon class of 2014. During my time at Kenyon, I often felt that there should have been more respect for student workers and the workers of the college in general. When the college began outsourcing their labor to Sodexo, I remember feeling gaslighted: how could curriculums at Kenyon teach working class students like myself to build movements and power while pushing down the workers in our own backyard? The experience made me realize the need for employees to be able to directly hold the institution accountable. I am now a Union organizer myself, and currently serve in leadership as the Lead Organizer for Community Programs at SEIU 1199 NE.
For this reason, I fully support the organizing efforts of the Kenyon student workers. It is absolutely immoral for our college to teach students that they are worth more while paying them less. It is immoral for the administration to preach equality while taking advantage of its workers. It is immoral for us, as a community, to allow the administration to unfairly discipline student workers without speaking up.
I'm joining the Kenyon community voices and standing up for justice. I want the Kenyon administration to do the right thing. We need the college to steady their moral center, officially recognize the Union of student workers, and bargain in good faith.
**Kindra Fontes-May ‘14**

In addition to being a graduate of Kenyon, and hailing from Knox County, I am the daughter of a long-time staff member, the sister of a staff member/alum, and the sister of a current senior. Kenyon is a family affair, and was a huge part of my life for many years. I was an employee of the Library and Information Services and The Art Department during my time on the hill, as well as working events for both the Office of Commencement and Alumni Affairs. I worked full time every summer during my college career.
I truly learned a lot from my campus jobs, but I also recognized the disparities that they represented. I worked a job because I needed to. On a campus where a staggering amount of students don’t receive financial aid, I was one of the few who did, and that’s a debt I continue to pay.
While my boss in the library fought often to try and raise my wages, there was a lot of pushback from her supervisors. When I started the job, in the lowest student pay grade, I came to understand that the pay was determined by the amount of job training a student had to do for their job. As full time staff members had their positions abolished in the library, my position was expected to absorb a great deal of responsibility, and the pay did not reflect these changes. Our student handbook was as thick as any of my textbooks, but somehow my job training wasn’t significant enough for a pay raise, despite working a job that should have been worked by a full time staff member.
Since graduating, I have been a firm advocate for workers rights and involved in organizing my own workplaces. (Sometimes we are radicalized by our Marxist professors!) I am a proud member of AFSCME, as my coworkers and I have just won the right to a union at my own place of employment. I support the unionization efforts of student workers of Kenyon to protect its most vulnerable students, who are often left to shoulder the weight of poorly managed employment cuts and who represent some of the most underappreciated jobs on campus.
**Reagan Neviska ‘17**

My name is Celina German (she/her/hers). I work at the Research and Reference desk at the library (Mod B). I’ve stayed with this job for almost a year because it lets me explore my passions for academic research, extensive database searching, and genuinely helping others when they ask for it, whether by coming up to the desk or walking over to chat. I also compete on the Kenyon swim team and study History and Women’s and Gender Studies. I take pride in being an Ombuds Campus Mediator, Orientation Leader, and student representative on LBIS’ Diversity and Inclusion Team.
As a first-gen citizen and the first of my family to complete undergrad in the United States, I’m deeply moved by the chance to provide peers accessible information. I resonate with those who feel like their family’s gatekeeper of knowledge and yet still feel at times stressed and lost at college. In a meeting with my manager, Ron Griggs, I heard the refrain that his staff, my employers, are system thinkers. Simply put, when the system has a bug, you fix the issue by looking at the big picture, analyzing the full infrastructure and targeting problems until it is functional again. I don’t know if I would call our system laudable yet. Some specific issues were so distracting that my passions started to dim. The two most striking issues are unregulated employee conduct and expectations and a staff unrepresentative of Kenyon’s student body.
Upon starting my job, I struggled to tolerate a coworker’s insensitive comments that were made to me outside of the workplace. Yes, they didn’t act rude in the company of our employers, but workplace culture doesn’t occur in isolation from everyday campus life. I am not bitterly talking about getting the short end of the “favoritism” stick. It is a matter of not holding all employees to the same standards. On top of that, I was very concerned that there did not appear to be any receptive means to file these complaints to my boss. No one should have to shoulder the burdens of an unhealthy work environment before knowing solutions, like mediation, are available. Worse than my rude coworker was the reality that two students of color discreetly quit, or were let go, without the rest of the workers knowing the cause for their termination. Instead of immediately letting them go, why was the support they needed emotionally, physically, financially not provided? Why did our employers decide to not inform us about how it will affect the representation of our services around campus?
After this change, our student workers were all white.In our training, we never discussed how our status as a predominantly white group of student workers would be perceived by the whole student body, and how it might impact our ability to help our peers. This must change. A union gives us the opportunity to voice our opinions. These issues are not unique to the system I work in. You might have similar issues or might be sympathetic to mine. However, only through a union can we showcase and highlight these discussions surrounding worker’s rights, collective bargaining, and changing the system that we didn’t have input in creating. Only through a union can our student workers across divisions and departments have a collective say in fixing the complacent system. I support this union. I support K-SWOC.
**Celina German ‘21, Research and Reference desk**

My name is Sofía Alpízar Román (she/her/hers). I am an international student from Costa Rica, and I study Political Science and Latinx Studies at Kenyon College. I am also one of the General Directors of A Medio Camino, Kenyon’s Spanish Magazine.
This year I changed jobs, and I will now work as an Intern for Digital Kenyon. However, since my freshman year, I have worked as a Desktop Service Assistant (DSA), and my experience as a student worker was positive since my first shift. My supervisors always treated me with respect and kindness. They patiently explained each task I had to perform, and they always emphasized that if I needed help they were there to support me. More importantly, they understood that I had to both prioritize my well-being as a person and my classes as a student. As long as I communicated with them in advance that I had to change my work shift because I had to go office hours or because I was not feeling well physically, mentally, or emotionally, they would change my shift. Lastly, they made me recognize the importance of my work for life on campus. DSAs, along with other student workers, make life on campus run smoother, but very few members of the Kenyon community know about the work we do. We wipe out computers’ hard drives, install Windows, pick up electronic devices professors and staff members no longer need, and fix issues with electronic devices in offices and classrooms, especially when a project does not work and the professor does not know what the problem is. The Kenyon community can take its smoothly-functioning technology for granted because DSAs are there, working behind the scenes, to make sure that everything works the way it should.
I believe that a Student Workers Union is important because having good working experience as a student at Kenyon should not depend on students being lucky enough to find a job with good bosses. It also should not depend on their privilege to choose a job based on the working conditions and not on salary. Through a union, we could ensure better working conditions and job security for all student workers regardless of where they work on campus. That is a right all student workers should have. Since students are the priority for Kenyon as an educational institution I ask the administration to support this initiative, as it would improve not only the lives of student workers but also of the campus as a whole.
Sofía Alpízar Román, Digital Kenyon

My name is Graham Ball (he/him). I am a rising senior studying Physics and Political Science, and I have worked for LBIS Helpline since I started at Kenyon. When I was hired, I was overwhelmed by the breadth and depth of knowledge required to do tech support at Kenyon. Over my three years at Helpline, through training and extensive on-the-job experience, I became very good at my job. In the Spring of 2020, I was promoted to Senior Student Manager of Helpline, a position which comes with extra responsibilities and a raise in pay from the Helpline standard tier-2 to the slightly higher tier-3. Then, less than one week before I was expecting to begin work, I found out I had been let go.
I wasn’t notified through a personal message or meeting, rather I had to infer my loss of employment after seeing my name was missing from the list of Helpliners working remotely. I quickly followed up with my supervisor who confirmed I was out of a job and that he had known for weeks that I wouldn’t be employed this fall. Furthermore, he could give me no guarantee of employment when I return to campus in the Spring. Like many of my fellow students, I am taking a personal leave of absence this semester. I had communicated my plan and my reasoning to my supervisor around a month ago. He said that he wasn’t sure if he could employ me, as taking a semester off necessitates unenrolling from Kenyon. However, he assured me that he didn’t want to lose my expertise and that I should proceed as though I would be working in the fall. In the last communication I received from my supervisor, he told me to review the instructional documents to prepare for the incoming first-year Helpliners I would be training. Apparently, just days later, Ron Griggs decided that unenrolled students would not be employed. I wouldn’t find this out for weeks.
Now, I need to find a new job on short notice to supplement the income I was expecting from Helpline. I need to find a new job at Kenyon for next semester so that I can fulfill my federally mandated work-study. As it stands, there is no guarantee that I’ll find any job on campus at all. Work-study students receive no priority for hiring in the Spring semester.
The union could have saved my job and the jobs of every student deferring during the pandemic. The union could have ensured that we would be employed when we return to campus. At the very least, a unionized workplace wouldn’t have waited nearly a month to communicate my termination with me. My experience speaks to the disregard with which Kenyon treats its student workers. It shows a fundamental ignorance to the realities of life for work-study students. My experience demonstrates the concrete value the union would have in protecting the livelihoods of student workers, work-study or not. Now we must stand together. We must stand for work-study students, for international students unable to return to their remote jobs, and for the student-workers who fall through the cracks. We must stand for the union.
**Graham Ball ‘21, Helpline Consultant**

My name is Kayleigh McCoy (she/her) and I am a senior anthropology major at Kenyon. I work as a Wright Center tour guide and previously served as a Digital Team Gund Gallery Associate, and am also a member of the Sexual Respect Peer Alliance, a Beer and Sex Advisor, a Kenyon Review Associate, and am involved with QDubs and Unity House.
Working at the Gallery and Admissions, I have held two of the least “problematic” jobs on campus. My bosses in both of these workplaces have been nothing but kind, helpful, and understanding, and I’ve found both jobs offered me flexibility to take on more work and become involved in different projects as I wished, gaining unique experience rare for undergrad students. This is not true of all students in either of these jobs--my specific roles within each workplace have played a significant role in the flexibility I encountered.
However, as I began to learn more about KSWOC and the future for student employment that we were imagining through the union, I began to see the problems I had previously not noticed. The most prominent one is how low the wages I was paid are. As a Gallery Associate I was paid Tier I wages, which were $8.30 per hour when I started. Someone shared the official Kenyon guide to wage levels, and as I read over the description, I realized that most of the work I had been doing for the Gallery involved, according to Kenyon’s own definition, Tier II level responsibilities, and some of it could probably be classified as Tier III. At one point, a professional designer for the Gallery was brought in to train us in the Gallery’s branding guidelines. While I was grateful for the special opportunity to learn from a professional and get the experience of designing publications and promotional material for the Gallery, in retrospect I am uncomfortable that on some level a professional was training us to do basic aspects of his job that I am certain he was paid more than $8.30 an hour for.
I also found out through KSWOC that because half of the student body is working remotely in the fall, Kenyon is legally required to pay each worker at least their state of residence’s minimum wage. I live in Virginia, which has a $7.25 minimum wage, and will receive my regular Tier II wages ($9.92). I love my job at Admissions and try to put in as much energy into it as I can, but when I found out that students living two hours away from me in DC with a minimum wage of $15 would be paid 1.5x my wage and students in Maryland receive about 1.25x what I will, I was pretty upset that my wage would not be based upon the effort and care I put into my job, but rather geographic factors that I have no control over. **This disparity shows that Kenyon has had the ability to pay student workers much more than their current wages, which barely hover above Ohio minimum wage--they simply choose not to.**
Working toward unionizing with KSWOC has made me realize that my workplaces are far from the only exploitative jobs on campus--the job of CAs require large amounts of time and mental and emotional energy, and before they organized with the support of KSWOC, they were paid only Tier II wages. I have also realized the opportunities that workplaces like Admissions have to increase accessibility and ensure that all people can visit Kenyon and consider it a real option--opportunities that have simply not been taken and which a union would be an instrumental to push for. By joining the union, I am not only fighting for improvements to the issues in my personal experience, but for every other student employee at Kenyon to be ensured fair pay, supportive workplace conditions, job security, and for the many grievances I have heard during my time in KSWOC to actually be addressed by an administration that seems dead-set on ignoring basically every complaint from students in favor of protecting their reputation and money. By unionizing, I am fighting for a better Kenyon for all current student workers and for a future where the importance of student workers to Kenyon’s ability to exist is acknowledged and respected by the administration.
**Kayleigh McCoy ‘21, Admissions**

In 2012, I arrived at Kenyon with the word “community” resounding in my head. This phenomenon not only originated from the end of my high school experience and a summer spent working on a farm, but from Kenyon admissions publications, social media uploads, and alumni. Whenever anyone discusses Kenyon, it seems that this word always finds its way, with good cause, into the conversation. Often, however, community in the context of Kenyon is seen just as an intellectual or educational community. It is so much more; it is a local community. Our community includes students, faculty, village residents, and staff. What's more: these identities are not mutually exclusive.
While at Kenyon, I navigated two spaces: student and worker. Like many student workers at Kenyon, including LBIS workers, KAC workers, teaching assistants, and CAs, my day-to-day activities were contingent on the maintenance of my job(s) -- and vice versa. If I had to work a double shift or help a professor out with a last-minute research task, there really wasn't much of a choice involved. Why? Because saying "no" comes with it an element of risk when you don't have any job security.
As Kenyon administrators do the genuinely hard work of figuring out how to proceed with the school year during a pandemic, they should ask themselves, "who are we excluding and who are we including?" And central to that question should be a consideration of those students who are imperative to the functioning of the college. In my humble opinion, by recognizing the rights of student workers as a collective entity, Kenyon would be demonstrating a dedication to fostering community and care towards some of its most vulnerable students.
I am proud to be a Kenyon alum, I am proud to be a member of this community, but I firmly believe that the failure to recognize a student worker union would be a great misstep by the college.
**Milad Momeni ‘16**

My name is David Han (he/him/his) and I’m a current senior at Kenyon. I’m a Biology major with longstanding interests in English and History, and enjoy backpacking with the Outdoors Club, volunteering with the Archon Society, playing cello, and working in an environmental toxicology lab when not in class.
One of the central lessons of my time spent at Kenyon has been that writing is fundamentally a community endeavor. I’ve never written anything (at least anything I’ve been proud of) without having talked my ideas over with classmates in a seminar room, a professor in office hours, or friends in Peirce. The growth of a writer’s individual voice cannot occur in isolation- it requires continuous feedback from peers and the development of a coherent method of self-criticism. For this reason, the restrictions on social interaction set by the COVID-19 response pose significant challenges to students trying to learn writing as a craft. Now more than ever, it is crucial that incoming students, their professors, and staff have the support they need to create a meaningful educational experience. In this unique moment, Kenyon workers, including all off-campus students, deserve better job security, adequate training in remote learning technology, and fair wages.
Working at the Writing Center as both a consultant and Biology department liaison has been an important experience for me over the past two years. It’s been extremely rewarding to see the improvement that even an hour’s worth of revision can produce in a student’s first draft, and observe the growing confidence of first-year writers as they transition from formulaic five-paragraph essays to college-caliber papers. It’s exciting to watch a student who struggled with making a bar chart in R or maintaining consistency in tense at the start of their first semester become academically self-reliant by December. The Writing Center provides a key service to many Kenyon students, especially early in their education, and helps to build a strong community of writers organized around the improvement of their work.
However, I am fully aware of the fact that structural barriers to working at the Writing Center prevent many other students from having similar experiences to my own. The most significant among them is the most glaringly simple: the pay rate, at Level II (9.92/hr), is not commensurate with the amount of training required to become a walk-in consultant. This training includes a 0.5 credit, semester-long English course, which translates to a significant tuition cost that often outweighs the amount that any consultant could expect to earn working for the Writing Center. For me, working as a consultant was possible because my financial aid package does not require a work-study component, but a truly equitable working environment would not necessitate that consideration in the first place.
Kenyon student workers need a union because there is no more effective and democratic way for us to gain representation and better working conditions. By organizing, we will continue to build close-knit ties between student workers and the entire Kenyon community, and help pave the way for a more just future at the College.
**David Han ‘21, Writing Center**

My name is Harry Clennon (he/him/his) and I am a senior Political Science major at Kenyon. I am employed at the Writing Center as both a consultant and a liaison, but I also serve as the President of Kenyon College Democrats, the President of Delta Tau Delta fraternity, and the co-editor in chief of the Kenyon Observer. Last year, I served on Campus Senate. While I enjoyed my time as the Junior Class Senate Representative, I was often frustrated because it felt like our work was primarily guided by the administration–not the students or even faculty on the body–and we worked at a sometimes glacial pace. Furthermore, the Senate was stripped of its actual legislative power the year before I was elected. The administration's apparent unwillingness to bring students into the decision-making process for consequential campus issues is a large part of the reason why I believe a student workers' union is necessary. Until students have a seat at the table, particularly when it comes to matters like employment where students' mental and financial well-being are at stake, Kenyon cannot fulfill its purpose as a community of scholars and students who teach and learn how to deliberate on the issues that govern our lives.
I am very grateful to have the opportunity to work at the Writing Center. Consulting other students on their papers has allowed me to hone the editing and writing skills that are essential to my academic work, my work at the Observer, and my job prospects after Kenyon. I deeply enjoy the fact that I am able to contribute to the community that I love, and I see how essential the Writing Center is to Kenyon's focus on the cultivation of good writers. This is particularly true for first years, who come to Kenyon with differing levels of writing experience, and benefit greatly from peer-to-peer conversations about their early Kenyon essays. However, the Writing Center is not without its problems. In order to work there, students need to take a full semester course that amounts to many hours of unpaid training, and have limited access to scheduled shifts throughout the course of their employment. There are no guaranteed hours for work-study students. This means that the Writing Center is a workplace that is pleasant but ultimately prohibitive for student workers who need to work in order to make ends meet. I am privileged enough not to rely solely on my income from the Writing Center, but if Kenyon's administration seeks to provide a sufficient source of income for students who depend on their wages, the Writing Center as it stands falls short.
A student workers' union would facilitate great strides towards transforming the Writing Center into a source of employment for students who need it most. Wage increases, paid training, and priority hours for students on work-study are critical to such a transformation. Such successes would be unachievable without collective bargaining. Of course, this does not extend only to the Writing Center. A student workers' union that serves all students employed by the college will bolster our ability to realize just working conditions, conditions which are ever more important during a pandemic that threatens all of our lives and livelihoods. Furthermore, it would open the door to more democratic decision-making in the governance of Kenyon as a whole, an aspect of life on campus that has been sorely lacking for students since the time I arrived on campus. If the Kenyon administration believes in its mission to provide an equitable educational experience for all of its students–without fear of financial hardship–and its proclaimed mission of teaching students how to think and live intentionally in their communities, then it cannot deny its students their right to organize and bargain collectively.
Harry Clennon ‘21, Writing Center

The Kenyon Farm is much more than a job to me. It's where I sleep, eat, study. It's where I cook for my friends. My time at Kenyon has been entwined with the farm, especially the lives of its animals and crops. It's often hard to remember that I am even a worker. Without the labor of my co-workers and myself, the farm would not exist.
I am a low-income student, who relies almost entirely on financial aid to cover my tuition, room and board. I am a work-study student as a result, but have never met the hours required to compensate for my loan. In order to work full-time at the farm, students have to be in residence at the Farm House. A room in the Farm House costs the same as living in an apartment on campus, which is far beyond what is covered by my financial aid. As a low-income farmer, I’ve been forced to make the decision between paying out of pocket for my housing and being able to take on enough hours to meet my work-study requirements. Many other students haven’t been willing or able to make that sacrifice, and the high cost of living remains a roadblock for potential farmers.
I have been put in situations far beyond what is expected for Tier Two pay. I have moved a large industrial refrigerator without equipment, cared for sick or dying animals, and monitored live births. What’s worse, I’ve seen my co-workers suffer serious back and head injuries from heavy lifting. Although much of this work goes beyond farmers’ expected hours and puts them in a degree of danger that is not typical of a regular campus job, we will often see the crops that we harvest go uneaten and the meat from culled animals become rotten. Because the farm is heavily subsidized, there is an attitude amongst our management that any tool that is broken can be replaced and any food that is wasted can be replanted. By taking this position, they ignore the enormous potential that the farm has, and delegitimize the honest and important work that Kenyon’s student-farmers do every day.
I want a union because I want a foothold to negotiate our way out of these problems. Outside of the farm, I want a union for my fellow workers, many of whom are in much more vulnerable positions— international students at risk of losing employment, students who need their jobs to support their families, students who are facing harassment and have nowhere to turn, to name a few. Because students have very few employment opportunities off campus, managers and the administration feel they can act with impunity. It is important that student employees, who are disproportionately non-white and lower income, let Kenyon know their worth, and have an equal seat at the table. The only way I can see this happening is for every student worker to organize, if not to protect themselves from mismanagement and exploitation, then to protect their friends, or their friends’ friends. This is a collective movement that requires collective action. I hope to see all Kenyon students step up to the task at hand.
Dante Kanter ‘21, Farm Associate

At Kenyon, I was an Anthropology major and student worker, Quizbowl player, and occasional contributor to the Collegian. These are the strongest through threads in my life at Kenyon and my college employment led to my current career. I worked for four years on an archival project in the Anthropology Department and just completed a Masters degree that will support my career as an archivist. Beyond this, one of my earliest, most memorable, and formative experiences was as a student activist with the Kenyon Community Alliance campaigning against efforts to outsource staff in the Maintenance Department, which began in 2012 and resulted in the creation of the Middle Path Partnership. I got to know staff, faculty, and students who were passionate about the importance of unions and supporting each other as a community. Unions build solidarity between the workers they represent and in that process strength the communities to which those workers belong. While admissions materials and official communications often reference the Kenyon community, staff and local residents are too often excluded from that group. At the same time, the College does not always provide enough support for members of our community, from inadequate mental health services for students to undermining unions and unionization efforts among staff. Kenyon College is better off thanks to its unionized employees and their supporters who regularly organize to ensure that the College takes action that supports its community, from not outsourcing to protecting full retirement benefits for staff, and student workers organized in a union will be empowered to do the same. Student workers allow Kenyon to function, the College could not operate without them, but many student workers experience financial precarity. A union of student workers is essential for their own advocacy, as well as defending the interests of the student body as a whole. If we truly care about students, student workers, and the Kenyon community, it is on all of us to support a union for student workers.

Jake Griffith-Rosenberger ‘16