Workers’ rights have become an increasingly important issue in Madison since the uproar of protests at the Capitol last year.  During the budget repair bill protests, I became interested in worker’s rights not only for public workers, but for students here at the University of Wisconsin. When I heard that the Associated Students of Madison was hosting a Student Workers’ Rights Campaign, I was proud that my student government was working to help students in a very significant way.

I began working this semester, so naturally I was eager to get involved and hear what ASM had to say about student workers’ rights. At the kickoff, they brought up some statistics, including that the median wage for students at UW was $8.50 an hour. You would have to work more than a full-time job year-round with that rate just to pay for tuition.

An eye-opening moment at the kickoff was when students starting sharing their personal stories. Most of the people there worked to pay for college. One person talked about how his best friend had to work two full-time jobs to pay his way. Another talked about how she met a student who had to spend five months homeless, despite having a job. One man there was older and was formerly a student – he couldn’t afford to ever finish college.

The stories illustrated what the facts proved: The American Dream, the idea that if you just work hard enough, you can pay for college and rise to the middle class, is dying. There are people who believe in hard work and believe it will help them get through college. It doesn’t. The math is abundantly clear: Tuition skyrockets and wages stagnate.

Even the middle class is not free from the hardships of paying for college, especially since the recession. Allie Gardner, the chair of ASM, told a very personal story about her middle-class background and how that was thrown into doubt when a parent lost their job in the recession.

One thing is clear – students need to be organized. The speaker, Joe Richard, showed it’s not wages or protections at the end of the day, but power. Students should have a say in the policies around student workers. Students should have a say in how universities spend their tuition money – even how they set tuition. Students, sadly, are at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to policy power. The state government, university administration and other groups consistently put their interests over students’. If our voices are to be heard, we need organizing.  

That can take the form of a union, the grassroots committees on ASM or the many student groups fighting for student interests on campus, ranging from SLAC to WISPIRG to MCSC to MEChA. Any way we move forward, we must move together if we are to have a say in the policies of our university. Only then can we ensure we can attend to this university and graduate with dignity – and without debt.

Esta Pratt-Kielley ([email protected]) is a freshman intending to major in journalism.