Student Life Archives

Flexible flexes

Dear Editor:

I read with great enthusiasm your suggestion of returning flexes to the Washington University dining plan [“Center Court: a worthwhile tradition,” Jan. 26, 2005]. Of course, I was also a bit disappointed that some students oppose the idea [“Flexes: a failed idea,” Jan. 28, 2005]. Then I realized that they simply don’t remember the best days of flexes.

There was a time when flexes did not expire from week to week; they would be added to a student’s meal plan on Sunday mornings, yes, but they didn’t always disappear into the ether on Saturday nights. Of course, this was in the dark ages of 1998 through 2001, so it is no surprise that this idea seems strange to current students.

If Center Court is to be repopulated, then Dining Services is going to have to return to a system that worked just fine, from a time when the room was often too packed to find a table for three or more. Rolling over flexes from one week to the next made the all-you-can-eat Center Court both attractive and easily affordable, as well as gave students more of an option of when to eat and when not to, without having to worry about losing 30 bucks from their meal plan at midnight on Saturday.

Maybe it’s time for Dining Services to remember what worked, and get away from what doesn’t.

-Brian Lewis,
Class of 2002

Biological consistency

Dear Editor:

Re: “All men are created equal…?” [Jan. 28, 2005].

I agree with Brian Schroeder that it is not a bad thing to say that humans are different. I think that it is undeniable that there are biological differences between the sexes. No one should be offended by this statement. We are different and it is impossible to treat everyone with exact fairness, although we should try to be the least unfair. However, in this pursuit we should at least be consistent.

Studies show that woman earn less than men for the same job. Some people say this is because of biological differences in that women may become pregnant and have to leave their job for a certain amount of time. Most people would call this discrimination and just because women have a biological difference they should not be subjected to lower wages.

Yet, when a woman is pregnant, she wants the choice to decide to abort the baby or to carry it to term. The father is not given a chance to decide because the woman has a biological difference; it is her body, so she alone has the right to choose. I wonder how many people would call this discrimination.

The point is we are all different and these differences lead to certain consequences. Whether it is that men learn science differently than women or that women give birth while men watch. When considering how you feel about your biological persuasion, at least be consistent.

-Brandon Gustafson,
Class of 2005

My name is Hunter Haas, and I am a private school survivor.

I was amazed at the ignorance of the article, “Buying your way into Wash U” [Jan. 26, 2005] and slightly surprised by some of the allegations that it includes. I went to the same private school for 13 years. My school was not along the eastern coastline of the U.S. but in beautiful Cleveland, the heart of the Midwest. I spent 13 years working hard in order to get into a school like Washington University, and I guarantee that my school name alone did not get me in here. I had never heard of grade inflation before I started applying for schools, and I will once again guarantee that my grades were not all A’s and I was never simply given good grades just for showing up or paying tuition.

I find it offensive that I am being told that, just because I went to a private school, I do not deserve my place here as much as Dinndorf does. I worked hard every day, studying as much or more than my friends at public schools, took the same SAT’s and was involved in similar sports and clubs.

As a member of both the Student Admissions Committee and the Campus Interview Team I know for a fact that the University takes pride in selecting its students based on more than grades alone. A 4.0 is not a guaranteed ticket anywhere anymore. Interviews, extracuriculars, recommendations and SAT scores, as well as several other criteria, factor into the admissions decision.

When it comes down to it, I feel as though I may have had to work slightly harder than some to get in here because I came from a private school. Yes, several of my friends went to the Ivy League, and yes, many more of us were expected to do so. But it came time to apply, that meant applying against many more students from my school.

Private schooling is not one large conspiracy to take over the world, but instead an alternate choice for some parents who feel that their children might receive a better education there or benefit from smaller classes or specialized programs. Some students attend private schools for special programs that deal with learning disorders or for programs that cater to a particular realm of academia. I think that these students too work hard and just as equally deserve their chance at a school like ours, based on what they have accomplished, not where they have accomplished it.

In addition, I find it very naive to assume that all parents who choose to send their children to private schools don’t care about the kind of education their child receives, only that their financial investment will guarantee a 4.0. I reiterate that I never had a 4.0, or even anything close, and still managed to get in and succeed here. The University is also a private institution; I wonder if Dinndorf is claiming that the grades we receive here are all inflated and therefore we don’t deserve those either.

We should open our eyes to the people around us and look at them for who they are, not where they came from. Whether you came from a public high school or a private one, we all had to work very hard to get in here and must continue to work just as hard to succeed here.

Margaret Bauer

In 2003, David C. Novak, CEO, President, and Chairman for Yum! Brands Inc., which owns fast food establishments Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, A&W Restaurant, Long John Silvers, and KFC, made over $3 million. However, the people-and they are people-who pick the tomatoes that go in his Taco Bell chalupas are paid $.0136 per pound of tomatoes that they pick. You read that correctly: a penny and another fraction is what they get for every pound. This results in a compensation rate of about $50 for two tons of picked tomatoes, which is what they pick in an average work day.

Fifty dollars over an eight hour work day comes out to $6.25 an hour, above the minimum wage of $5.15. The problem with this logic is that these people don’t work eight hours a day. They wake up at 4:30 so that they catch buses out to the fields by 5:30. They won’t be back before 5:30 p.m.; this is no nine to five job. Their real hourly pay is closer to $4.50 than minimum wage. Their bosses get away with this by editing the time cards to be in line with their earnings rather than their hours. There is little political will to combat this and other abuses because most of the workers are not naturalized.

But because the law refuses to meet its responsibility, we consumers must correct the wrong we see. In response to the unacceptable treatment of workers, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers came into existence to improve the quality of their lives. The Coalition has celebrated great successes in the past, including ending the practice of beating workers and uncovering slave labor rings. Now the coalition is pressing Taco Bell to pay growers enough money so that they can pay the workers one more penny per pound of tomatoes. This is a significant amount from the workers’ perspective; it would nearly double their pay. It would bring them up to a living wage, around $90 a day.

When you consider this from a business perspective, it seems like nearly doubling some expense would be too great a fiscal burden to bear. But when that percentage is so small and insignificant to begin with, doubling it makes little difference to the corporation. Last year, in an effort to end the CIW’s nationally coordinated assault, Mr. Novak sent the Coalition a check for about $110,000 that Yum said would cover the one penny increase per pound the workers were requesting. Of course, the CIW had no means to distribute the money properly, so they sent it back and fought on for the wage increase.

But this act provides helpful information. Knowing how valuable the increase would be to the workers, we must wonder how important it is to the company. They reported global profits of $1.059 billion. That $110,000 would be just .01% of those profits. That small a change in profits could never affect the company in any appreciable manner. It wouldn’t change their economic outlook or the company’s image in the corporate world. They would never lose a share sale because that money was spent.

Cut Novak’s annual pay by 3.6 percent. Or cut Yum’s top executives’ pay by just a single percent. That is enough to pay for decent food, shelter and basic healthcare for CIW workers. The benefits seem to drastically outweigh the costs considering how much business they are losing. More than 20 Taco Bell restaurants have been closed by the efforts of this coalition, and they only seem to be accelerating. Certainly, the profits from those 20 installments could cover the raise for the workers. What about the next 20 places the Coalition closes? This is not going to work out well for Mr. Novak unless he decides to cooperate. It may be the only way he can get his hands on that next million.

Whether or not Taco Bell stays on the Washington University campus will be determined very soon because their contract is almost up. A committee from the Student Union will survey the desires of the student body and report the results to the Director of Operations at Bon App‚tit, Steve Hoffner. Hoffner has made it very clear that he has no concern for the Immokalee workers and will only act in response to the will of the students. The Student Worker Alliance is hopeful that the student body will reject Taco Bell and the shameful labor practices it supports.

When I was in Tbingen, a banner used to hang down the front of the Hegelbau, the building where I had my weekly history seminar. It had a grim message for the student body: “The bomb is ticking. Protect yourselves!” Next to the words was a little spherical bomb, like the kind you see in old cartoons, with a lit fuse and the words “tuition fees” written on it.

It’s hard for us to believe, but German students aren’t used to the idea of having to pay for their education. In the spirit of egalitarianism of the ’60s, tuition was abolished at German universities (all of which are publicly funded). But the universities have fallen on hard times. They are terribly under-funded, which means that seminars are too big and departments have to scrimp everywhere they can: one of my history professors told the class to help out on the electric bills by turning off the lights when we didn’t need them!

In the mid-90s, political pressure started building to make students bear part of the financial burden. Small changes were made. All students had to pay a very modest semester fee (in Tbingen in 2004, this was 57 Euros or $75). Students who overstayed their welcome (by taking too long to finish their degrees) began paying a more substantial fee. And recently, the pressure has built to force true “tuition fees” on everyone, especially in more conservative German states like Baden-Wrttemberg, where Tbingen is located.

The proponents of tuition fees scored a major victory last Wednesday. The Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe struck down a federal law banning the fees: education, and therefore fees, is primarily the responsibility of the states, not the federal government. Several states are already moving to put in place new fees of around 500 euros ($650). Some other states, fearing a flood of students, have discussed raising fees only for out-of-state students.

Think about that: some German university systems are struggling to keep students out. That’s because they aren’t rationing education by price and aren’t good at choosing students. Admissions procedures are extremely complex, especially since German universities do not provide a liberal arts education; students choose their major at the beginning. Certain majors have a “numerus clausus,” a minimum GPA required for acceptance, or other special requirements; some majors admit anyone qualified who shows up.

Compare that to here: American universities compete for the most qualified students, and students compete for the best universities. That’s because of several factors: a competitive mix of private and public institutions, high tuition and a thorough application process. In a very real sense, American students can act like consumers, applying to multiple schools and picking the program that is best for them. That provides a steady impetus for schools to improve themselves and meet student needs.

At Washington University, we students often say that the administration cares more about our ranking in U.S. News & World Report and impressing pre-freshmen than taking care of the students who are actually here. Nobody really fully believes the joke, but there is some truth in it: because universities are competitive, they have to reach out to potential customers. And that ensures that students are faced with a variety of programs and degree paths that help them achieve their life goals.

By contrast, Germany’s universities are almost entirely geared towards training academics, leaving lower institutions of higher education to provide more practical training. Advocates of tuition fees hope that they will lead to an environment in which universities treat students as customers, rather than a captive audience. Also, students will begin thinking more like consumers, trying to enter the most desirable programs and get the most bang for their buck. One German economist has estimated that tuition will have to rise to 2,500 euros per semester to achieve this goal.

But being a customer means more than just paying money: it means competition among producers. German universities are all financed by state governments, and so it is easy to think of them all as being part of the same machine. If German universities want to become the best in the world once again, they must increasingly think of each other as competitors. Admissions procedures should become more than a way to weed out students from a pool that is too large: they should try to identify the best students and encourage them to come to a particular university.

Nevertheless, tuition hikes are a step in the right direction. Before students hit the streets in protest, they should think if they might be shooting themselves in the foot.