Nineteen-year-olds holding Goyard bags and wearing Prada sneakers joke as they pass the striking workers. I hear one mimic the union cheers and snicker to their friends. As the teens walk by Day Hall, I wonder where they’re headed.
Would I be relieved if they were going to an ILR class? Perhaps, in those classrooms, they’d change their opinions on low-paid labor and challenge their beliefs. On the other hand, there’s something depressing about studying labor relations while blatantly disrespecting labor movements.
Maybe they’re headed to the Statler. Aspiring to be leaders in hospitality and business, they’ll use their Cornell education to propel themselves into prestigious roles where they can put their disregard for the working class to use.
Joking aside, I don’t believe these students are bad people — just misguided. At times, I’ve been in their shoes, making jokes despite knowing better. Strikes are contentious, and people have opinions on either side. But we need to remember that these are the workers who feed us and keep our buildings clean. In a setting where many are living away from home for the first time, the striking workers care for us in ways we often don’t fully realize.
Moreover, Cornell’s hyper-competitive job-seeking culture makes us ignorant to the reality of work. When applying for jobs or accepting offers, students often consider the prestige and career capital of a position over compensation. Unpaid internships for “experience” and resume-building research skew our perspectives on the importance of benefits and living wages. The “bubble” of dining plans and front-loaded housing payments helps us forget daily financial stresses, even though many of us know student loans and the cost of living will catch up with us after graduation.
Opinions about labor movements on campus definitely vary. The group of students I saw doesn’t represent the majority at Cornell. But there’s still a cohort of wealthy students, many of whom have never worked real jobs, who look down on the service and blue-collar workers who keep the University functioning. From the comfort of luxury cars, they’ll tell their friends, “college shouldn’t be political,” and complain about the closure of on-campus cafés.
At the same time, other students joined the picket line and posted “We stand with the UAW” signs in their Collegetown windows. They gladly packed lunches and found ways to adapt during the strike. These students went beyond supporting the workers in conversational debate, they stood in solidarity with them and amplified their voices.
Now that the strike is over, we must not forget the lessons we learned during those two weeks. Some of my favorite Cornell moments are grabbing a snack with a friend or decompressing after class over a cup of coffee at the Big Red Barn. Much of the “college experience” happens in dining halls and dorm lounges. The people behind the scenes — cooks, dishwashers, custodians and facilities workers — ensure that our Ivy League education isn’t just academic but rooted in social and community engagement. These workers aren’t accessories to our college experience; they play integral roles in our daily student life. Our lives are intertwined, and students have a greater stake in worker job satisfaction than we often realize.
Protests also play a valuable role in keeping our student body engaged with the world beyond the classroom. In a somewhat rural place like Ithaca, it’s easy to become disconnected from news and events. Protests force us to engage with public discourse and confront the struggles the broader community faces. The UAW strike opened my eyes to the challenges of people I interact with daily but had never stopped to talk to. But it also opened my eyes to the cruelty of Cornell students, and our inability to connect with those different from us. Just as the University administration took the strikes as a way to confront failures in their compensation standards, we should all see the strikes as a call to action for personal reflection on our beliefs. Most importantly, we should use it as an opportunity to find common ground across barriers of occupations, age or other identities. Protests strengthen our community — if we choose to not let them divide us.
Julia Poggi is a senior in the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences. Her fortnightly column The Outbox is a collection of reflections, advice and notes to self about life at Cornell, with a focus on coursework-life balance. She can be reached at [email protected].
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