As I passed Collis last Tuesday in the rain, I saw a group of protesters demanding fairer compensation for Dartmouth staff members. As I think most would, I sympathized with their goal of justice for all. But it remains unclear to me whether the protesters' demands are reasonable or feasible. I had received a flyer the Monday before that promoted the protest and outlined the protesters' grievances. It concluded with the question, "What impact does [reduction of healthcare benefits] have on a worker making $35,000 a year?"
My first thought when I read this question was, "How privileged do you have to be to think that $35,000 a year is a salary for the destitute?" A family with two adults working for the College would be earning at least $70,000 a year, or almost $10,000 more than the median family in the United States. When Eli Lichtenstein '13, a student speaker at Tuesday's event, criticized the Dartmouth community for giving aid to Haiti while ignoring the struggles of staff members in our own backyard, he was criticizing donations to a country with a per capita income of $1,121 when adjusted for purchasing power in other words, 3 percent of the ostensibly low salary of $35,000. Lichtenstein does his cause a disservice by comparing the suffering of disease-stricken and starving Haitians to that of Dartmouth employees.
Nina Rojas '13, another student speaker at the event, said, "It's not ethically right it's not social justice to take away $15 million from people who make this place Dartmouth." But the financial crisis has forced the administration to take away $100 million from all the people who make this place Dartmouth: students, staff and faculty members. The administration may have cut employee compensation by $15 million, but this means that 85 percent of the necessary cuts have come from other parts of the budget.
If this $15 million had not come out of employee compensation, it would have come from somewhere else. I am grateful that unlike some of our peers, such as Williams College, we have been able to maintain our need-blind admissions policy for all students, regardless of national origin. If we restore compensation for staff to previous levels, other parts of the budget will be hit, and financial aid would surely not be an exception. In fact, financial aid has already seen some cuts, though it remains at generous levels.
In some respects, Dartmouth is like a family, and everyone staff, students and faculty members has a role to play in it. But that also means that when the family's budget is $100 million smaller, all of us have to chip in. Unlike most families, Dartmouth has an explicit raison d'etre to educate. If we left employee compensation untouched while reducing investment in teaching and research, we would have effectively redefined our mission.
But like most of us, I would rather not pit one part of our community against the other. Even as those of us who can afford sacrifices make do with our end of the budget cuts, there are those among us who really cannot. Rather than criticizing charitable giving to one of the poorest and most disaster-stricken countries on earth, why not put our money where our mouth is, and organize a charitable drive for those most affected by the budget cuts? I can give to Bike and Build, China Care or many other charities at my own convenience just walking through Novack Caf or down Webster Avenue, but there is no easy way for me to give back to staff. In this time of financial crisis, I would gladly give to help a struggling staff member's household make ends meet.
The College cannot arbitrarily compensate suffering employees more than it compensates their peers who can afford the sacrifice, even though any spending cut, as necessary as it might be, will always have a disproportionate impact on someone. But if we truly are a community, we can try to fill that gap. And regardless of where we stand on employee compensation, we should all demand fiscal accountability to prevent another $100 million budgetary disaster, caused in part by the poor fiscal planning that professor Hoyt Alverson highlighted two years ago ("Prof.'s letter criticizes budget increases," April 14, 2009). That, more than anything else, would assure a stronger and safer footing for this community and college of ours.
