It’s 11:30 p.m. on Friday night, my roommate is just coming home from her closing shift at the dining hall. She is tired and exhausted, but most of all she’s hungry. As a student employee at the campus dining hall, she no longer gets free meals during her shift and to save money she decides to wait to eat dinner until she gets home.

With the start of winter term 2017, the University of Oregon’s dining employment service has officially removed the free shift meal within every student employee work contract, forcing these employees to pay 3 dollars for every five dining hall points. I believe that is simply unfair to student workers because they depend on such employee benefits to get through their time at the University.

This new policy is outright unethical to these students. They can’t afford to spend money during every shift that they work. They rely on that money to be put towards tuition costs and rent. My roommate is already on a strict budget, and now she has to be even more slim with her money choices since she no longer gets a free meal. She has to decide whether or not to spend money and eat during work, or save money and go through multiple hours of work not eating.

Additionally, the University knew that this would be unpopular with student workers, but yet they initiated this policy last summer, when there were not any student employees working in the dining halls. Thus not giving students a fair opportunity to protest or debate. But now that the ban has passed many students, along with myself, see it as an exploitation of student workers.

This policy offends student employees and it’s ridiculous that it even passed. How does the University not see that these students need these jobs and their benefits for important reasons? The University administrators were once students themselves, so they must understand the constant stress of budgeting money as a student. And if so, why are they choosing not to help students? Why are they choosing to make student living harder? The majority of workers are not just working for the free change; they’re doing it for actual critical reasons. The main reason being to afford to go to the same school that is cutting their work benefits. The University knows that student workers are not part of a union and are taking advantage of that, by not listening to their protests or reasoning. I would not be surprised if the University sees a decrease in student employment because of this new rule. Students need work benefits and they will seek out jobs that have the best benefits available, whether those be University affiliated or not.

An average student employee works at least 11 hours a week in-between classes. Their schedules are busy with work, studying, going to classes and the glimpse of managing a social life. For example, on Wednesdays, my roommate works from 9:30-12:15 in the morning and again from 8-10:30 at night. She doesn’t have time to make herself a sack meal for dinner, nor does she continually have the cash to pay for a lunch at the dining hall. It’s hard to understand how the University thought that this change would be favorable within student life. The University is choosing to ignore the constant finacial struggles that students face every day. They are choosing not to consider that college students live very busy lives, making it near to impossible to find time to go grocery shopping in order to pack a lunch. To me, it feels as if the University made this new change without even thinking twice about their student employee’s lifestyles.

The UO Service Employees International Union Local 503 (the campus union for the University’s staff), predicts that full-time student worker salaries will actually decrease $700,000 annually if students do choose to spend $3 on shift meals. Three dollars may seem like a small price to pay for a meal, but it’s much more than that. This money is coming straight out of the student’s paychecks. That’s $3 that they could otherwise put towards tuition, paying off student loans, rent costs and it’s less money available for school expenses like textbooks or supplies.

The University needs to bring back the free shift meal for their student employees. These employees deserve the free meal and desperately need it. Students put in hard work during their shifts and practice notable time management skills when balancing school work in-between work shifts. Their hard earned money needs to go to significant costs like tuition and living expenses, especially now that the University has already increased tuition for the upcoming school year.

It’s unfair to now charge these employees for food that was once free. It would be one thing if these student employees never received a free meal, but to give it free of charge and then come around and force them to pay for it, is simply cruel. It’s a tease to take away these free meals and give the students less benefits. Student dining hall employees only make minimum wage, and they deserve these benefits to compensate working during their busy school schedules.

Ultimately, taking away the employee free shift meal will drastically hurt the University just as much as it hurts the student workers. This new policy is tyrannical and repressive, and disrespects the student employee. If nothing changes, the student employee’s will end up spending the majority of the money they earn on shift meals, when it should be going to more important issues like school expenses. The University already demands so much money from students, why should they continue to hold students at the mercy of the school and charge them for meals during their work shifts? I believe that student workers should get a free shift meal, because they honestly deserve it.