Posters taped on Quad exit of the Gray Campus Center. Photo provided by Quest Editor Laura Dallago.
UPDATE: Student Body Vice President, Josh Cox ’17, recently announced that the Summer Housing cost will return to its previous price of $350/months.
The mood in Eliot 314 was tense on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 9 as administrators and house advisors (HAs) met, along with a handful of Reed senators, to discuss a last-minute restructuring of the payment process for HAs—a restructuring that HAs insist has detrimental impacts. The announcement caught HAs off-guard, especially because it came at the same time as their acceptance emails, merely a day before they had been originally expected to finalize their contracts. “I was so excited when I got the email I started crying,” said a first-year prospective HA, “and then I read the second half and started crying for the exact opposite reason.” The news, many say, could not have come at a worse time, especially in light of a sudden boost in summer housing costs and a new batch of rumors about the size of the incoming class. All of these compounded create a general air of ill will between administrators and students, particularly those of low socioeconomic status.
“There is this rhetoric, there is this expression…that [Reed is] valuing and prioritizing low-SES students,” said a current HA. “It does not feel that way. This is an enormous pay cut. This is not just less than room and board, this is not just slightly less than room and board. This is much less than room and board…also in the context of increase in summer housing costs, this is happening both during a fiscally and academically stressful time.”
House Advisor Pay Change
Currently, residence life compensates HAs by crediting room and board on their tuition accounts. At the beginning of every year, the cost of room and board is simply cleared from their account and not billed. Under the new structure, HAs will be paid $12,590—the cost of a dorm room and board plan B—in 16 twice-monthly installments, a payment structure designed to match those of other on-campus student positions. Two results of this are that each paycheck is subject to state and federal taxes, leaving a gap between the amount earned after taxes and the cost of room and board, and HAs will have to pay $6,000 at the beginning of each semester in order to clear their account of the room and board charges.
Students will have to pay the difference between their HA pay after taxes and the actual cost of room and board. The dollar amount of the tax on each HA’s paycheck will vary by person depending on the personal allowances they claim, according to Tracy Frantel, Controller. Frantel and Dawn Derry, Payroll Specialist, ran a few examples of how the numbers would work out, finding that with one withholding, the out-of-pocket cost for the student would be $1800 per year, which is effectively a 15 percent pay cut. Additionally, Frantel said her staff would work closely with students to establish a payment plan so that they would not have to take out a loan to cover room and board. This payment plan would be run within Reed and would not have an initial fee like the Tuition Management System does.
Lorraine Arvin, Vice President and Treasurer, said the idea for the change came two weeks ago when a staff member asked how HAs are paid with respect to other student positions. The administration decided that the payment process should be streamlined for all paid student positions, and all compensation must pass through payroll. Arvin explained that in designing the new system, members from a variety of college offices considered “what standard practices were, outside requirements, [and] what the impacts were to low-SES students,” finally deciding “we really needed to change the way we pay our HAs, and that we should pay them through payroll just like every other student job.” Members from residence life, human resources, financial aid, student services, admission, and business offices participated in restructuring HA pay.
Milyon Trulove, Vice President and Dean of Admission and Financial Aid, explained that the group considered a few options, such as structuring HA pay as a form of financial aid, or one lump sum at the beginning of the year. However, providing HA pay through financial aid would result in smaller grant sizes, and the lump sum payment would have even more severe tax impacts. They settled on their final choice because it had the least impact on students, but Trulove admitted that the plan does have it drawbacks.
Students asked in increasingly clear vernacular why the decision was made on such short notice, and why the change could not have been postponed until next year. Administrators at the meeting offered no substantive response, other than wanting to streamline payment processes across student positions, to meet outside requirements, and match HA compensation policies to those of other peer institutions. “Overall we did get advice on this and overall we believe that the requirements say that [HAs] should be paid through payroll,” Arvin shared.
HAs at the meeting made it clear that their job differed from other student jobs at Reed, so paying them like any other position does not necessarily make sense. “How do we work in the differences of being an HA and other part-time jobs…since [HA positions] don’t have specific hours?” asked one student. Another made note that since HAs live in their place of work, there is never a time when they aren’t working—something which does not need to be taken into account for other student jobs. Another student expressed frustration about administrative language around what is expected of HAs. “[The position] is presented so differently from other jobs on campus,” she said, adding that she was told that “[being an HA] was a position, not a job,” and that “room and board was compensation, not a wage.” She directed frustration towards administrators at the forum, saying “you could have gotten student feedback throughout the process,” a sentiment expressed by several others.
Many HAs present at the meeting wanted to know the effects of the change in compensation structure on financial aid. Since their $12,000 compensation will now be counted as taxable income, some are concerned that their expected family contribution would increase, decreasing their Reed grant amount. Sandy Sundstrom, Director of Financial Aid, explained that students’ increased income from their HA position will not be accounted for as personal earnings and would not change their financial aid assistance. However, one HA asked how this works out for independent students, who do not have separate parent and student income. Trulove responded that in this case it is likely that their financial aid would be affected, and that he would have to work through their individual situation. Overall, the specifics of how the financial aid office would go about avoiding accounting HA pay as personal income for dependent students were unclear.
Later after the meeting, Hannah Graunke ’17 shared how the last-minute notice of the pay change feels as a HA. “To the administration that changed the way the compensation system works so that House Advisors effectively receive a 15% pay cut: You cannot quantify in dollars the feeling of coming back so upset from a meeting—in which you tried to justify the pay cut—to your WORK & HOME to find that your residents are happy. That they wrote on your whiteboard. That they tell you that you deserve a raise. That they are GLAD you were there for them to help them navigate through this crazy place called Reed. I’m sorry you think that I deserve less. But I don’t. And [my residents] don’t,” expressed Graunke on Facebook Wednesday night.
Students also expressed frustration with the [clinical] approach administrators take to issues that have genuine impact on student life. “It’s hard for me to feel that this is all about emails, all about meetings,” said a current HA. “This is about people.”
Summer Housing Price Change
This summer, an unprecedented amount of students may be forced to try to find an answer to the housing question, as ResLife almost doubled the monthly rent charged to students living on-campus during the summer. The rent hikes, which entail monthly fees rising from $350 to $500 a month in a 43 percent increase, have been met with resistance from Reed’s Low-Socioeconomic Status (low-SES) Students group. These students protest that the extra hundreds of dollars the school now requires to stay on-campus for the summer makes it impossible for them to do so.
Posters have gone up around campus in protest to the recent on-campus summer rent rise, reading “REED WANTS TO PUT POOR STUDENTS IN BASEMENTS AND GARAGES” and “SUMMER RENT PRICE INCREASE: 43% STUDENT MINIMUM WAGE: $9.25 hour. DO YOU WANT US HERE OR NOT?”
Students generally apply for summer housing due to financial reasons, difficulties traveling home, and on-campus research or jobs. One sophomore stayed here last summer because they “needed a full-time job to build savings, and seasonal full-time employment is hard to come by in [their] economically depressed hometown.” Earning minimum wage as a student worker for Building Services (a subset of the Physical Plant), summer housing was affordable enough to still put away some money for the school year and conveniently located near their job.
Last summer, on-campus accommodation was offered to Reed students in Naito, a dorm which—unlike the newest on-campus accommodation, The Grove—does not have air conditioning, nor does residence life traditionally equip student on-campus accommodation for the summer with fans or any other sort of air conditioning or cooling equipment. This year summer on-campus housing will be offered to students in Sullivan which also does not have air conditioning or other built-in cooling facilities.
“The rise in price has negatively impacted my ability to stay on campus,” one first-year student, who had been hoping to live in on-campus housing this summer, wrote to The Quest. “Though $150 might not seem like such a dramatic rise to the college, it makes a massive difference to students, especially students who don’t have the money, resources, or support to afford that amount on their own.”
“The $150 monthly increase means that the only choice afforded to those whose cheapest option is summer housing at Reed is being taken away,” added Anna Ma ‘15 in an interview with the Quest. “These students don’t even have a choice anymore, besides squatting, couchsurfing, living in some cheap illegal basement arrangement, living out of their cars (if they even have one), being homeless and camping somewhere in the Canyon…[The increase in summer housing fees] is an undue burden that will hurt those who have already been hurt the most coming from less advantaged backgrounds, the students whose need for summer housing is the most acute,” Ma concluded.
The Quest reached out to Dean of Students Bruce Smith, the business office, financial aid, residence life, and Senator and ResLife Liaison Chase Doremus in the hopes of clarifying questions about both the changes to HA payment and summer housing policy. At the time of press, only Senate had provided The Quest with answers. On behalf of Senate, Doremus wrote: “We’re all working hard to figure out exactly where these decisions came from and why, and the extent to which they will affect students. We’re talking to various departments and listening closely to the concerns of the students who will be impacted by these changes. We’re actively seeking long-term systemic solutions as well as short-term ways to minimize harm to low-SES students. We’ll be discussing these issues on the floor of the public Senate meeting on Friday at 4 p.m. in the SU, and would love to have as many student voices present as possible.”
Incoming Class Size
There is a lot of misinformation surrounding the size of next year’s incoming freshman class. Returning students fear that their chances of getting on-campus housing will be even slimmer since Reed guarantees housing to all incoming students and also because the large class of 2019 currently strains the available on-campus housing. The residence life housing lottery webpage states that Reed “is projecting a large first-year class for the 2016-17 academic year,” adding fuel to these fears. However, Milyon Trulove explained to The Quest that the class of 2020 will be smaller than this year’s freshman class, and the residence life website is not correct.