This month we, the “Vanderbilt Community,” celebrate the people who keep our campus beautiful, serve us food, clean our dorms, run our school and provide us with the education for which we pay so much. We are truly grateful for every single one of them, but I’m writing this editorial on behalf of the first three groups of people, asking that you take the time to learn about an issue that should weigh heavy on the shoulders of every person on this campus: Vanderbilt’s lack of a living wage.
LIVE (Living Income for Vanderbilt Employees), the activist group on campus concerned with the issue, defines a living wage as the minimum income necessary for a family of four with two wage-earners to live a sustainable life without government assistance. Until two years ago, the base wage (the lowest wage the university pays) at Vanderbilt was $6.50/hour. It is now $7.55/hour and many employees that have worked here for a decade or more still earn less than $9.00/hour.
Rev. James Lawson, a member of Vanderbilt’s faculty and a prominent figure in the national living wage campaign, has said that the absence of a living wage “is a derivation of slavery, which said … it's all right to have people who work and live on a subsistence basis, gaining no serious benefits except enough food to stay alive so they can stay working.” Unfortunately, quite a number of Vanderbilt’s employees live under these conditions, working only so they can put enough food on the table to allow them to keep working.
The living wage for Vanderbilt employees has been calculated as $10.18/hour. LIVE believes $10.18 per hour to be a conservative estimate that allows for few non-essential expenses, though it does provide enough for a family to sustain itself. A living wage estimates the cost of housing, food, childcare, transportation, healthcare, taxes and other necessities. Many of Vanderbilt’s employees must work second and third jobs in order to make ends meet. LIVE believes paying a living wage will help to eliminate this problem on campus. Forcing staff to work two or three jobs—simply because Vanderbilt refuses to pay what is necessary to live—means workers spend significantly less time with their families. All the while, our university gives lip service to its concern for all members of the “Vanderbilt community” by celebrating its workers in every way except providing them with the income they deserve.
In a statement concerning the state of college athletics and Vanderbilt’s dramatic restructuring a few years ago, Gee said, “Nothing short of a revolution will stop what has become a crisis of conscience and integrity for colleges and universities in this country.” Well, this month a different kind of revolution is coming to our university: a purely moral revolution, not a fiscal one. A revolution spawned by a “crisis of conscience and integrity” that the Chancellor refuses to acknowledge. I urge you to find out more about what you can do to help end this crisis that surrounds the very institution so many of us so readily accept as “just” and “responsible.”
Sept. 18 marks the first opportunity we have to let the administration know that we won’t let them get away with this grave injustice. This day is the first of many meetings the administration will have with its employees’ union (a bargaining force of over 600 employees). For more specific information check out our Web site, www.vanderbilt.edu/students4livingwage, and come to our weekly Wednesday meetings, 8:30 p.m. in Sarratt 363.
Russell Helsabeck is a senior in Peabody College.
