Camila Torres, Silliman '28

I live in Ward 22, and I am volunteering for Norah because I know she stands with working students and families. As an event aid at Yale, the hours were short – one to three hour shifts typically – sent out via email, scheduled monthly or weekly. But every minute of the hour was full of nonstop menial labor: scrubbing dishes, preparing catered food, vacuuming lush carpets, packaging leftovers, changing decor… All of this menial labor leaves me exhausted, with only two to three hours of Yale minimum wage to show for it. Meanwhile, the catering of meticulously prepared food, the theme-planning, the placement of the decor , the arrangement of the popcorn and the fruit platter, the maintenance of equipment, the ordering of student workers, the emails sent out en-masse to your college – is put upon one person, the Service Assistant to the Head of College. Yale buys as few full-time employees possible, instead hiring low income undergraduate workers like me hungry for any form of paid work. New Haven community needs more union jobs, and Yale could afford to hire more people locally!