Did you know that DDS bakers come in to work every day at 4:30 a.m.? Or that there are 1,177 bathrooms or shower rooms on campus that are cleaned on a daily or weekly basis? Or that, each year, 2.5 million customers get their cards swiped at DDS registers? We didn't either, until this week.
At the beginning of this fall, Palaeopitus Senior Society got together to define its goals and ambitions for the year. Of the many ideas tossed out, two jumped out at us as being related. First, we feel that while Dartmouth has managed to attain a significant level of diversity, simple respect is still lacking in many areas. Second, we believe that many students are not aware of the community that surrounds them and supports them. In our mission statement, we stress the importance of raising awareness of, and encouraging respect for, every member of the Dartmouth community. The staff is often overlooked by students, and in response to this, we organized Students Say Thanks: Staff Appreciation Week, which has recognized a specific segment of the Dartmouth staff each day for the past week.
Deciding which staff to recognize during this week was difficult, but a line had to be drawn in order to turn our goals into reality. We defined staff as those employees of the college who are paid an hourly wage, and we chose to specifically recognize those groups of staff that have substantial interaction with undergraduate students. To simplify things, we chose a different group of staff for each day of the week. DDS was Monday, ORL Custodial Staff was Tuesday, Facilities Operation and Management (FO&M) was Wednesday, Administrative Assistants were Thursday, and Safety and Security and Health Services are both today. These six groups certainly do not encompass all of the Dartmouth staff, and we apologize to those who are not recognized explicitly within one of these categories. Be assured that you have our gratitude for your service to the College, and that your lack of inclusion within these five groups does not mean that your work goes unnoticed.
Staff play an integral part in every student's Dartmouth experience, yet this is not always immediately recognized. These staff members help campus organizations to form, sustain themselves and perform well. They help keep our campus facilities functioning appropriately, safely and comfortably. The staff here ensures our safety and help us when we're sick or injured. They feed us, and they clean up after us. Yet somehow, many of us fail to look them in the eye, say "please" and "thank you" or offer a greeting. As Palaeopitus, our goal is to make students aware of the real people behind these jobs. These are people who have families and hobbies. They like to travel, or ski, or root for their favorite baseball team. They have a variety of reasons for working at Dartmouth, but for many of them it's the chance to work with students that makes their job special. One member of the ORL custodial staff drives 60 miles to work every morning. A member of the DDS staff has been working at the college for 44 years. This type of commitment is amazing, and yet most students are totally unaware of it. To be fair, many of us on Palaeopitus were unaware of these things until this week.
Today we recognize the officers of Safety and Security for their role on campus. Among their many jobs, S&S officers keep us from hurting ourselves, hurting others, or getting in trouble with the Hanover Police. They give us rides when it's cold, wet, or dark out, or when we're unable to walk. They let us into buildings when we're locked out. However, for all that they do for us, they receive little thanks. How many times do you think people have vomited in their vans? Nobody likes taking care of a drunk and belligerent roommate, yet Safety and Security is often forced to do this for people they don't even know. All too often it is only the complaints and mistakes that surface, unfairly overshadowing the multitude of positive things that are done. We're all "on the same team," looking out for the well-being of the Dartmouth community. Safety and Security officers deserve to be recognized as individuals for all they do to keep us safe. Too often we see them simply as a faceless group that enforces rules.
We would also like to note that some of the members of Palaeopitus itself (as you would find in almost any cross-section of the College) have met up with S&S under less-than-favorable circumstances. However, this does not prevent us from recognizing the officers for the things they do, respecting them as individuals, and simply saying thanks. They look out for those of us who need it, either because other people are not looking out, or because we can't look out for ourselves.
As this week has progressed, we've heard some people express an unwillingness to recognize S&S for their contribution to the college and the student body -- we'd like to encourage them to step back and reexamine their own responsibilities to themselves and others around them, and to reconsider their community as being made up of individual people, just like themselves, who think critically, have hobbies, hold values, and enjoy interacting with others.
Saying thanks to staff this week is great, but even more important is the goal of increasing student awareness of the parts of the Dartmouth community that are all around us and might otherwise go unnoticed. These people are much more than their job descriptions. We urge you to extend this concept beyond this week, making future "Appreciation Weeks" obsolete. Think about the role of staff in the Dartmouth community, and make the small effort to respect those around you, smile and say thanks.
