College Should Pay Student Workers Higher Wages Arrival of Aldi has Opportunity, Drawbacks

Hanna Alwine Opinions Editor

A new semester has started at Oberlin College and with it has arrived a new addition to theOberlin community. ALDI — with its strange deposit-based shopping carts and bulk produce — has set up shop right across the road from the Walmart in Oberlin. But does Oberlin need another big-box store?

The trend of big-box stores worming their way into small towns has made it increasingly difficult for local businesses to stay afloat. Their tendency toward mass production and outsourcing labor to other countries allows them to keep their prices and wages low. General merchandise big-box stores are particularly detrimental to small businesses because they carry such a wide variety of products, whereas small businesses, such as hardware stores, bakeries, and stationery suppliers, generally serve a more niche clientele. To the stereotypically overworked and underpaid American, bigbox stores have become an accepted and necessary evil, despite their reputation for lower-quality products and poor labor practices.

Cecily Miles

Columnist

Oberlin College asserts on its website that it has a “commitment to inclusion and academic excellence,” of which its financial aid policies are supposedly a reflection. These policies include student loans and money earned through student employment, in addition to grants. They are intended to make Oberlin more financially accessible by allowing students who are unable to meet Oberlin’s sky-high tuition cost or are otherwise in need of financial support to attend the College. Yet while the College markets its financial aid and other employment opportunities as the realization of its commitment to its students, inclusive ideals, and promises to meet “100 percent of demonstrated need for every student,” the low wages paid to student workers contradict that mission.

A quick scan of the current job postings on the student employment website reveals that most offerings hover either at minimum wage or slightly above it — presumably, the many that are listed at or below $10 an hour have not been updated to account for the recent statewide raise to $10.10. Many jobs, as noted previously by the Review, have high standards for applicant consideration and require either highly skilled or highly difficult labor despite their menial wages, perhaps giving insight into why they remain unfilled. The lofty required qualifications support arguments for greater employee compensation.

Regardless of what these jobs entail, an argument can still be made for better pay. Coupled with the rising costs of tuition and student expenses and the limited hours students can afford to work given their course schedules, the pay earned for the part-time hours students work is insufficient. It is reasonable to expect that such an outwardly progressive employer as Oberlin College would subscribe to the higher baseline standard that all are deserving of liveable compensation for their labor. The excessive work hours that many students must take on to compensate for their low hourly wages interfere with their academic lives and success, which directly contradicts the standard of academic excellence that Oberlin promotes. By creating such a barrier for these student workers, the College heightens the disparity between them and their higher-income peers who don’t need to work, even as its employment policies purportedly facilitate inclusivity on campus. claimed progressives, they are the first to denounce Walmart’s casual exploitation of workers and reputation for cheaply made products. Despite Walmart’s poor consumer reception – in a 2021 survey conducted through the American Customer Satisfaction Index, customers ranked it dead last – Oberlin students continue to shop there because of its cheap and accessible goods. ALDI, on the other hand, provides a seemingly ethical alternative. It exists as a wholesome, wholesale food retailer with reasonable prices and fresh food. It secured the number one spot in Greenpeace’s 2019 ranking of supermarkets based on their plastic reduction efforts, and the number two spot in 2021. It boasts produce sourced from local farmers and livable wages for both suppliers and employees. and larger corporations that fill the same niche working together against ‘bigger evils.’ This relationship can be seen in local bookstores’ relationship with Barnes & Noble. Barnes & Noble was originally regarded by small bookstores and their patrons as the corporate enemy. However, as Amazon and other online retailers have risen to prominence within recent years, this antagonistic relationship has changed into something more akin to allyship. Barnes & Noble’s near-bankruptcy just a couple years ago was seen as indication of brick-and-mortar booksellers’ inevitable decline. Its resurgence after the pandemic has been a symbol of hope for local bookstores, which would’ve once seen Barnes & Noble’s success as detrimental to their own.

There is an obvious fix for this, and the effect of Ohio’s latest minimum wage raise on student workers offers a case study for the College to raise its pay further. Past Review coverage of the raise found, in interviews with two students, that it was either insignificant or allowed for the possibility of fewer hours for the same fiscal result. In order to be universally and significantly impactful, a pay hike would need to be far greater than just 80 cents.

I will concede that this policy is not without complications. The extra wages will have to come from somewhere, and past measures by the College to account for wage increases have had adverse effects. Already, the Student Finance Committee, an organization that manages payment for select student positions from the Student Activities Fund, has instituted a freeze in creating new paid positions for student organizations for this semester.

Maintaining currently offered student positions and raising their pay will require a shift in the College’s budget to expand the allocation for student employment. This expansion will, ideally, encompass the pay for those positions that are no longer affordable to the Student Finance Committee. It should not come from fees charged to students, the very cost of which their employment is intended to offset. It will require the detraction of funds from other budgetary areas, some of which are surely overblown given the College’s enduringly large endowment and the comparatively negligible portion of it devoted to students’ — and faculty and staff — wages. Whatever sacrifice such a shift might entail is an opportunity to reflect the College’s expressed prioritization of its students’ well being. A true commitment requires going above the bare minimum.

The practice of big-box stores entering small towns and driving out local businesses is a recognizable phenomenon, one so common that we have seen it become its very own rom-com genre. The plot is typically anti-corporation despite the majority of these movies being produced by Hallmark — once a greeting card company that has since expanded its multimillion-dollar enterprise into more and more markets. The existence of this media trope points to an interesting yet enduring American behavior — our readiness to condemn corporations and the corporate world as a whole while continuing to support them in our everyday lives. Walmart fills such a role in Oberlin students’ lives. Self-pro -

Despite this, ALDI is still a bigbox store. Its very existence represents the dissolution of other community-owned businesses, if not in Oberlin, then in other cities around the country and around the globe. However, it is not a general merchandise store, but a supermarket. It specializes in goods within a specific range. Unlike Walmart, it doesn’t cater to every market — hardware, books, consumer electronics, grocery, home goods. When an ALDI moves into an area, it doesn’t compete with every small business in town, only local food retailers.

Aside from the IGA, which is a part of a larger organization, there are few local food suppliers in Oberlin for ALDI to challenge.

In fact, ALDI fills a very specific need in the Oberlin community: fresh produce. Except for Stevenson Dining Hall’s brown bananas and Azariah’s Café’s sweaty fruit cups, there are few places on campus or in town where fresh produce is readily and reliably available. Which begs the question — does an ALDI in Oberlin really cause any harm?

In recent years, there has been an uptick in small businesses

Editorial Comic

Molly Chapin Staff Illustrator

ALDI’s presence in Oberlin may function in a similar way — it might be an unexpected ally of the Oberlin small business. Previously, Walmart served as a one-stop shop for everything a college student might need. Oberlin students’ Walmart food runs place them in close proximity to other supplies they might need – pens and notebooks and clothes and snacks that they might otherwise buy at Ben Franklin or Ginko’s Gallery or Ratsy’s. If instead, students go to ALDI for their produce, where they don’t have such easy access to these other products, they may be more likely to shop at Oberlin local businesses.

Small businesses are having a harder time meeting the growing demand for a larger variety of products at lower prices. The existence of specialty big-box stores may be their saving grace. Rather than working against one another, these two types of businesses can work together to prevent the monopolizing effect of Walmarts and Amazons. Whether Oberlin’s new ALDI will funnel business away from Walmart and towards Oberlin small businesses remains to be seen.

want to do things.

Moreover, contract grading aims to reduce the anxiety associated with overall course grades.

At any point in the course, students can use the guidelines in the contract to ascertain their performance in the course without having to reach out to their instructor or wait until final grades are released, at which point there is no opportunity for corrective action.

The previous article argued that contract grading inflates grades and underprepares students for the workplace. Contract grading is not a free-for-all distribution of ‘good’ grades, but rather an alternative approach to grading. It rewards hard work and penalizes lack of effort as much as any other grading system. Secondly, creativity is a valuable skill in the professional world; having the ability to give a fresh perspective to an issue or a problem is the driving force of innovation, which defines business. As such, contract grading does aim to better align course goals with the expectations of the workplace.

I was really disheartened when I read the piece in the Review that discussed contract grading in a negative light, and I hope that I shed some light on the topic. I see contract grading as an evolution of the standard grading system that aims to free students from conventional ways of approaching an assignment. When implemented correctly, it creates a less stressful environment for students and allows them to flex their rhetorical and creative capabilities. I expect some courses might have to be reorganized to better incorporate contract grading, but it is certainly worthwhile to do so.

Sampad Ghosh