BY CECILIA GONZALEZ-ANDRIEU
When he came home from his first few weeks in the freshman dorms, my son was downcast. I was puzzled.
He recounted his distress at the piles of trash and discarded food spilled everywhere by his dorm mates. “No one thinks about the people who have to clean this up.” His eyes filled with tears. “There’s a custodian who has to clean up after us.” He took a deep breath. “She looks like you, Mom, a little Latina lady. No one sees her.”
On my campus, as on many others, the highest representation of Latinas/os is among the custodial, cafeteria, and groundskeeping staff. On some campuses, they may be the only Latinas/os our students see, and they become a surrogate family for students far from home. Improbably, workers lacking education take it upon themselves to offer accompaniment and consejos (ancestral wisdom), especially to Latina/o university students. And yet, to most of our campus communities they are invisible, victims of systems that keep them invisible.
Talking about these things is uncomfortable. You may have been wanting to talk about them. Or you may have not noticed them.
But the good news is that those of us who are faculty, who generally have real authority on our campuses, can do something about these issues.
My abuela had a favorite consejo: “La persona bien educada no critica a nadie.” In English: A polite person doesn’t criticize. It turns out that most abuelas have taught my comunidad the same thing and, like my son, cry when no one can see. I love my abuela, and if she were still with us, I would say, “Abuela, I’m done being polite.” It’s time to criticize and to find real solutions.
Looking to the prophets
As a faculty member who is a theologian, I can point out that the prophets of our sacred Jewish and Christian scriptures were good at criticizing, because they faced realities they knew were a tragic disappointment to the God they loved. The prophets denounced what went against the vision of a God who was both “slow to anger and rich in kindness” (Numbers 14:8). Notice “slow”—thoughtful and deliberate—but also notice “anger.” Jesus knocks over tables devoted to commerce in the Temple in Jerusalem, as God’s kindness reveals what is wrong with systems of commerce and tribute, burdening the community’s poor.
Respecting the working poor among us
Our universities pride themselves on service trips and student volunteer hours, and yet we turn a blind eye to our systemic inequities and to the poor who make our universities run. The pandemic exposed a culture of “essential workers,” a phrase suggesting we can’t do without them. These are people who often live paycheck to paycheck, holding down multiple jobs and lacking the safety nets we take for granted. It’s time we collectively take a look at our organization’s structures and, like the Gospel we claim to follow, put the needs of the poor first.
So, we faculty should ask: What are the wage structures like on your campus? Are workers paid a living wage? What benefits do they receive? Do you have an independent ombudsperson or social worker from whom they may receive assistance without fear of retaliation? Are your communications systems accessible, linguistically and culturally appropriate? What budgetary adjustments could your campus make so the worker community is compensated fairly, treated with dignity and able to feed their families?
Ana Teixeira (above) is among the hundreds of employees on the custodial, hospitality, and groundskeeping staff who make possible day-to-day life on campus at Boston College. The Heights, BC’s magazine, featured Teixeira and others in a mid-pandemic spotlight on essential workers. Photo courtesy of The Heights.
Sharing the benefits of education
Industrialized societies rely on an uneducated workforce to do hard work for little pay. In 1891, awareness of this gave rise to the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum, the first major document in modern Catholic Social Teaching, which states that “some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class.” Pope Francisco continues this tradition of Catholic Social Teaching with his unrelenting focus on the suffering poor.
As centers of education, we are either working to remedy their suffering or we are benefiting from it. Which is it? Is your campus offering GED, English language, or computer literacy classes to your coworkers for free during their workday? If we hold education as a universal good at the center of who we are, why are we not building internal systems to move our own coworkers out of poverty and to better jobs?
Coherence or hypocrisy?
Finally, if in our classrooms, we faculty speak about justice and equality, do our students actually see us living these ideals on our campuses? Does “love of neighbor” stop at theory and never move to transformative action? Looking to us as their teachers and mentors, will our students work to change the world moved by our embodiment of God’s unconditional abundant love? Or will they become cogs in a machine that uses up and spits out human beings?
As universities we can bring about transformation in our society, but it needs to begin on our campuses with those who have power taking responsibility for reforming our systems to better reflect who and what we are meant to be.
Do we choose coherence or hypocrisy?
Cecilia González-Andrieu is professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University.