One cannot throw a stone at the University of Dallas without hitting a student worker, such as a barista at the Capp Bar, a librarian or a Printing and Postal employee with a cart. Among that population though, there has been a change: budget cuts to different departments have changed employment availability and student worker eligibility.
Some jobs switched to requiring Federal Work Study-eligible students, closing their doors to a portion of the student population. This left some students who formerly had secure positions without any employment through no fault of their own. Some openings have decreased in number or disappeared. Others lost hours.
Federal Work Study (FWS) allows schools to open up more job positions than they would otherwise have, granting more opportunities to students who are awarded Federal Work Study on the basis of financial need. The federal government provides a certain amount of money to a school, in our case, UD, covering a certain portion of the school’s Federal Work Study allocation. The school covers the remaining portion.
UD then distributes the funds to different departments such as the classics department or Printing and Postal. The departments can then offer jobs to students who have been awarded Federal Work Study, as the money has been set aside for them to earn for themselves through their FWS job position.
Recent internal budget cuts pushed various departments towards leaning on the Federal Work Study fund to offer jobs.
Campus Ministry in particular felt the effect of these changes. For example, working in the Campus Ministry office formerly did not require Federal Work Study. As of this year, however, Campus Ministry jobs require Federal Work Study. This forced some students without Federal Work Study to search for new employment.
Open A disappeared entirely when the weekly Wednesday night dinner had to be canceled due to the university’s budget cuts.
The classics department struggled to find students who both could tutor and had a Federal Work Study award.
Flannery Ellison, a sophomore double English and classics major, had been offered a position as a tutor with the classics department. However, as she didn’t have the required Federal Work Study award, she couldn’t accept the job. Ellison said, “I personally would have enjoyed tutoring very much, but since I already have two jobs, I am not sure that I would have balanced it, or that a very great loss has been incurred.”
Ellison had some reflective thoughts as she said, “I think it is unfortunate that the funding for tutoring especially has been cut. Tutoring is beneficial insofar as it improves the grades of students, creates a bond between upper and lowerclassmen and helps us to be humble in accepting our shortcomings in a subject. I mean, we are always going to wish the cut had been made somewhere else, but on something as beneficial as tutoring, I think it’s a great loss to the students.”
As of yet, the classics department has only one tutor, sophomore Pia Baxter.
The drama department also experienced changes from their budget cuts. According to Prof. Kyle Lemieux, their non-FWS budget was cut by 10% and their FWS budget was cut by over 50%, causing students such as sophomore double drama and philosophy major Clara Schneider in the costume shop to experience reduced hours at first.
Schneider said, “The budget cuts threw a bit of a wrench in my plans for the year for sure.”
Fortunately, Schneider received more hours later in the semester.
The drama department also had to change their staff for costume and scene shops, causing all previous employees of the shops, including Schneider, to have to go through the hiring process again.
Schneider said, “I worked in the Costume shop last year and so I was ready to start work earlier than I had last year since I wouldn’t have to deal with the new hire paperwork. But since we had to get new staff to head the costume and scene shops that obviously didn’t happen.”
Scene shop employees also had their hourly pay rate cut by around $1.50.
These students serve as only a few examples of how the budget changes affected student workers.