Mirror - Vol. 24, No. 05 - October 29, 1998

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Volume 24 Number 5 The Image of Fairfleld Thursday, October 29, 1998
Are we underpaying our workers?
By Audra Makuch
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Saturday, as parents filed into
Alumni Hall for Parents Weekend mass,
they were greeted by more than the Holy
Spirit. Outside the doors, several students
and faculty members handed out 400 pink
flyers supporting the custodial workers on
campus.
"This is what a Jesuit education
is really about," said Kathryn Ferranti, '99.
She was distributing fiyers as part of a
group that supports fair pay for the custo-dial
staff and questions the contract terms
Fairfield uses.
In 1992, Fairfield University
outsourced its custodial workers to Ser-vice
Management Group (SMG), based in
Bridgeport. Thus, the workers who
cleaned every building on campus were
no longer direct employees of the univer-sity.
Instead, they were all fired and the
majority were hired back the next day as
employees of SMG. The cuts for the
workers were immediate and dramatic.
Their children would no longer be able to
attend the university for free. In addition,
they would no longer receive full medical
and dental insurance coverage as part of
their employment package. Also each
worker's work load increased due to the
cuts.
In 1993 two students, after
studying the facts and speaking to work-ers
and administration, found what they
believed to be an unjust situation.
When questioned, the univer-sity
administration stated that
outsourcing was a cost cutting measure
that saved the university $1.2 million.
Those funds reportedly paid for new
computers and renovations to Canisius
Hall. The university contends that the
benefits to the students and university
community far outweigh the losses in
terms of worker's pay.
The group of students and fac-ulty
who find that the university is
wrong, known as Concerned University
Community Members (C.U.C.M.), is
mostly concerned that the university is
not fulfilling its own Mission Statement.
"I chose this school in part be-cause
of its commitment to social jus-tice
and dedication to service," said
Ferranti. "I do not pay this much money
to go to a school that puts up a good front,
flaunting its Mission Statement, but does
not back up its own policies."
The Fairfield University Mis-sion
Statement states that: "Jesuit
education...is committed today to the ser-vice
of faith, of which the promotion of
justice is an absolute requirement." And
"Fairfield has a further obligation to the
wider community of which it is a part.. .But
most of all, Fairfield serves the wider com-munity
by educating its students to be so-cially
aware and morally responsible per-sons."
To study if the SMG workers
were being underpaid, the group first stud-ied
the conditions of custodial workers at
other Jesuit universities as well as area
colleges. They report that while Fairfield
workers do not have the lowest wages in
the country, they certainly do not have the
highest. Findings also revealed that work-ers
at Fairfield have among the worst ben-efits,
and do not have access to a union or
worker's organization.
According to an interview with
Eddie Rivera, the SMG liaison for the uni-versity,
the workers at Fairfield are paid
approximately $9 per hour. This is lower
. than the salaries the workers earned as di-rect
employees, and for one year the uni-versity
had a co-pay program that at-tempted
to supplement their new, lower
SMG salaries. Also, as part of the
grandfathering program, those custodial
workers' children who were enrolled at
Fairfield were allowed to finish up tuition-continued
on p. 3
Attack
Victim
Recants
By Dana Ambrosini
NEWS EDITOR
The student who claimed to have
been attacked by four assailants at the
beach has recanted that story to the
Fairfield Police Department and will be
medically withdrawn for the remainder of
this semester.
In an article in The Connecticut
Post, the Fairfield Police Department re-ported
that the student was attacked, how-ever
it was by an acquaintance who alleg-edly
sexually assaulted her.
The student had suffered abra-sions
to her face and stomach. She was
attacked inside of a home on Rowland
Road. Police reported that her wounds
were inconsistent with a stabbing (which
she had originally claimed ). They also
stated that the student was visibly upset
at the time of the attack.
Fairfield students contribute more than stress to the community
By Kimberly Parro
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
"Surely this is some lawless
Third World country, not a town with one
of the highest per capita incomes in the
world," said Colleen Sheridan, a year-round
resident of Fairfield Beach Road.
This is one expression of the
powerful sentiment towards Fairfield Uni-versity
students that is racing through the
Fairfield Beach community. The "lawless
Third World country" to which this beach
resident refers enrages the majority of
year-round beach residents who cite in-stances
of underage drinking, public in-toxication,
noise violations, littering, and
trespassing as community problems attrib-utable
to Fairfield University beach and
campus residents. Although the conflict
between year-round residents and student
residents has a long history, the problem
has been intensifying over the last few
years, and is presently climaxing, as year-round
residents now target landlords that
rent to students in hopes of terminating
this tradition.
Many students respond to resi-dents'
anger and defend lifestyles at the
beach by highlighting their positive con-tributions
to the town of Fairfield. Of
these, one of the largest and most exten-sive
is the economic benefit. Through a
host of different inlets, Fairfield Univer-sity
students have a real and highly sig-nificant
effect on Fairfield's economy.
According to The Connecticut
Post, that economic effect is much larger
than most would estimate. In a 1997 ar-continued
on p. 3
photo: Mirror archives
Kinko's is just one of many area businesses who benefit substantially from student patrons.
Inside this edition
NewTH
Developments
Who are those people in
the red shirts? see p. 3
for details
Nutrition
know-how,
Find out what's goodfor
you, see p.5
Fairfield Beach
defended,
Beach resident
addresses the issues,
see p. 8
Rusted Root
concert causes
upheaval,
see pgs. 11
Volleyball
claws past
Villanova,
get the play by play on
p. 14