In August 2020, Katie Grotewiel ’23 voiced her frustrations with the the long hours, lack of free parking and lack of pay that comes with serving as an Orientation Aide at the College of William and Mary. Grotewiel’s roommate suggested she unionize with her co-OAs. That afternoon, the Pay OA movement was born.
In spring 2021, Grotewiel approached the W&M Workers Union about the possibility mobilizing OAs for better worker treatment and a better orientation process. After a summer of Zoom meetings and struggling to get people excited about mobilizing, Grotewiel, the undergraduate organizing lead for the union, struck upon the central plank of the movement: pay.
For the fall 2021 orientation, “OAs are unpaid” buttons appeared on the backpacks of OAs and non-OAs alike. With an op-ed in the Flat Hat and those ever-present buttons, the campus had found an issue that connected national conversations about workers’ rights with an on-campus issue. But despite the ongoing movement, OAs still do not receive compensation from the College for their work during orientation.
There are two levels of student staff employed by STEP during orientation: Orientation Area Directors (OADs) and OAs. OADs are paid — in 2021, the ten OADs employed by the College received a one-time lump sum payment of $1,000 for 11 months of work. OAs, on the other hand, remain unpaid.
Director of Student Transition Engagement Programs (STEP) Lauren Garrett is responsible for the operation of orientation, but says that her office has limited control over OA pay. Garrett argues for a clear distinction between the unpaid OA role and the paid, more comprehensive OAD role.
“The Orientation Aide is a targeted-time commitment with a singular focus of welcoming and supporting new students and families as they join the W&M community,” Garrett wrote in an email. “Orientation Area Directors build upon this work and are engaged with the STEP Office for an almost full year as they help plan the orientation program and hire/train the Orientation Aides they ultimately manage during the program itself.”
“The Orientation Aide is a targeted-time commitment with a singular focus of welcoming and supporting new students and families as they join the W&M community,” Garrett wrote in an email. “Orientation Area Directors build upon this work and are engaged with the STEP Office for an almost full year as they help plan the orientation program and hire/train the Orientation Aides they ultimately manage during the program itself.”
This distinction helps explain Garrett’s justification for the OA position’s unpaid nature: OADs are the higher-level employees, while OAs are volunteers: peers who help new students orient to campus. According to Garrett, this emphasis on OAs as peers is essential to the culture and philosophy of orientation at the College.
“Our philosophy here is that students want to meet and interact with other students,” Garrett wrote. “We lean into ours that it needs to be a student-focused, student-based, student-run program.”
However, Grotewiel argues that the idea that OAs are peers to new students is false, pointing out in her op-ed that OAs are required to report student welfare issues such as Title IX violations or hazing. They are also required to act as Campus Security Authorities according to the Clery Act, which designates certain campus employees as mandatory reporters of crimes they witness or hear about.
However, Garrett argues that introducing pay would heighten the sense of disconnect between OAs and their constituents.
“As soon as you introduce monetary pay, other factors come into play,” Garrett wrote. “Expectations around compliance, training, and reporting. So, it’s no longer a peer sometimes you’re talking to. It’s a staff member.”
But for OAs like Grotewiel, who described having to work late into the night in case one of her constituents got lost or encountered any sort of problem, the changes that accompany pay could be beneficial.
“If pay does make it a different thing entirely, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing,” Grotewiel said. “We sit in Sadler for 15 hours a day for trainings, if that changes that, that might be a good thing.”
Another reason why OAs aren’t paid has to do with funding, and the lack of available money in the operating budget of Auxiliary Services, which houses STEP. Auxiliary Services are entirely reliant on user fees and can’t dip into the same sources of revenue, such as tuition and state support, that other programs which are housed under Education and General can. STEP’s entire budget is dependent on new students’ orientation fees for revenue. Therefore, any increase in STEP’s budget must be matched by an increase in orientation fees.
“At W&M, we have determined that the STEP program is best categorized under auxiliary services,” Chief Operating Officer Amy Sebring wrote in an email. “Each institution must determine which of its programs may fall under those E&G categories.”
Although the College’s Auxiliary Services budget is more restricted than other programs housed under Education and General, Garrett pointed out that other universities have different policies, allowing the usage of funds from tuition and other sources of revenue to fund orientation.
“A lot of my peers work with both what’s called a student fee, how we operate here, and they also work with university funds, which would be an E&G budget,” Garrett said. “That’s how they’re able to keep fees low while still doing other things.”
This constraint on where STEP gets its money puts Garrett’s office in a tough spot.
“I don’t know that our budget will ever be at a point where we will be able to pay the number of orientation aides that we have at present,” Garrett said. “Unless there was some change in financial support, then we would need to look at how we can continue to offer a quality program that builds relationships and offers resources, how do we deliver that with fewer student staff members, fewer student leaders involved.”
Garrett is wary of any fee increases. The College already leads Virginia state universities in tuition costs. Therefore, Garrett argues that drastically increasing student fees could dissuade some prospective students from attending.
“Sometimes students can swing tuition, fees are sometimes what put people over the top,” Garrett said.
However, Grotewiel is skeptical of the budgetary constraints of the STEP office.
“If the university is struggling to pay its employees properly, then there needs to be some re-budgeting happening,” Grotewiel said. “Universities are being run sort of business-like right now. In the same way that businesses who can’t afford to pay their workers proper wages, probably aren’t running their business properly, it’s sort of the same thing.”
“If the university is struggling to pay its employees properly, then there needs to be some re-budgeting happening,” Grotewiel said. “Universities are being run sort of business-like right now. In the same way that businesses who can’t afford to pay their workers proper wages, probably aren’t running their business properly, it’s sort of the same thing.”
The fight for better working conditions at the College does not end with Orientation Aides: the W&M Workers Union platform includes a universal demand for a $15 hourly wage for all hourly workers, and Grotewiel emphasized the need to pay all student workers, including those who do what the university now considers ‘volunteer’ work.
“We don’t have as effective an orientation as we could if we had a student worker population whose needs are being met,” Grotewiel said. “That also goes for tour guides. A lot of the small things are done by volunteers, and they should be paid for that work. By not paying orientation aides, they’re sort of cutting off all sorts of students. Not being paid, in terms of actual consequences for student workers, means low-income students are not able to be orientation aides.”
In addition to being unpaid, OAs are prevented from working another job during orientation, cutting off another potential stream of revenue for those who need it.
Garrett emphasized STEP’s flexibility regarding students’ financial needs, writing that when a student faces financial conflicts, STEP does anything it can to accommodate for that student.
Ultimately, the College doesn’t deny the points made by Grotewiel and other students regarding the need for OAs to be paid. STEP has worked to reduce the negative effects of unpaid OAs, acknowledging that these are valid concerns worth addressing, while using distinct justifications for OAs to remain unpaid. This ongoing tension, between a student body clamoring for OAs to be paid and an office stuck in a monetary bind, connects to a larger fight among workers on campus.
The Pay OA movement sits squarely within a larger, campus-wide push for workers’ rights, which has come to the forefront in recent years. The W&M Workers Union was formed three years ago, when a group of graduate workers in the humanities department, including Jasper Conner, a history PhD Candidate at the college and former president of the union, began to talk about their lack of compensation compared to STEM graduate workers. After forming a union, these same graduate students expanded their reach to include all workers on campus. Recently, the union won its biggest victory since its establishment: the university will now be paying 60% of the healthcare premiums owed by humanities graduate workers.
The Pay OA movement is intertwined with the Workers Union. While undergraduate members aren’t official members of the union, because they don’t have to pay dues, Conner applauded the many undergraduates who help out with the union. Conner immediately saw the connection between graduate workers’ cause and OAs.
“At William and Mary, it was a no-brainer when we started talking about OAs, our minimum demand is $15 an hour, no question on whether they supported that demand,” Conner said. “There is a similar sense to OAs as there is with grad workers.”
Yet, there hasn’t been a lot of progress in achieving the Pay OA movement’s goals. This will be a grind, Grotewiel said, since the Board of Visitors ultimately controls the fate of OA pay. Though there is student support, even amongst Student Assembly, changes may take a long time to implement.
Class of 2024 President Mia Tilman said Student Assembly doesn’t have much say in the matter beyond just advocating for the Board of Visitors to adopt policies supporting OA pay.
“I personally believe that Orientation Aides should be compensated for the work they do…. financing OA salaries through Student Assembly would likely go against this guideline within our code, so I think it would be unlikely for us to see a bill to fund OA salaries,” Tilman said.
Evan Koch ’22, President of Young Democrats, and Kieran Mangla ’23, President of Young Independents, expressed support for paying OAs (Koch expressed his opinion on behalf of the Young Democrats organization while Mangla expressed his personal opinion).
“Young Democrats call for Orientation Aides to be paid,” Koch wrote in an email. “The movement for OAs to be paid is part of a greater effort to support workers’ rights on campus.”
“I believe that most students (myself included) support OAs being compensated for their work through some sort of stipend, hourly wage,” Mangla wrote in an email.
Despite student support, the university is also unlikely to open the door for OA pay by moving STEP from Auxiliary Services to Education and General.
“Moving any program currently funded under auxiliary services to E&G would require a thorough review and careful planning,” Sebring wrote. “We can’t speculate on what state support may look like in the years ahead, but what we do know is that it has trended downward over the years.”
Furthermore, the introduction of a new Virginia governor causes ripples that affect campus-wide policies at the College.
“Part of what we find concerning about Youngkin is that he has released very little information about what policies he supports,” Koch wrote. “We fear that Youngkin may follow Republican precedent and roll back workers’ rights and protections across Virginia, which would have an effect on workers’ rights here at William & Mary.”
Youngkin will also begin appointing members to the Board of Visitors this January, which could change the composition and ideology of the group who ultimately controls the fate of OA pay.
All of this comes amidst a more immediate and existential challenge for the Pay OA movement: Grotewiel doesn’t know who will take over the movement when she graduates this May.
“Looking for the next person who’d take my place as the organizing lead, I’m keeping my eyes peeled for people who have the same sort of energy,” Grotewiel said.
While Grotewiel and Conner described actions that students can take now — such as signing the petition or withholding support for STEP by refusing to apply to be an OA — the movement is destined to be a “long conversation” and a slow grind, even as its leader is graduating.
“On the second day of Orientation, numerous OAs were talking to me about how we should strike,” Grotewiel said. “I’d be very excited to see that energy grow and take off. Boycotts can be a very effective tool to prove not only how many people are behind your cause but also just how essential you are to the labor that an employer/corporation/etc. may require. Personally, I love a good boycott.”
“On the second day of Orientation, numerous OAs were talking to me about how we should strike,” Grotewiel said. “I’d be very excited to see that energy grow and take off. Boycotts can be a very effective tool to prove not only how many people are behind your cause but also just how essential you are to the labor that an employer/corporation/etc. may require. Personally, I love a good boycott.”
Conner also continues to hold out hope.
“There’s power in unity,” Conner said. “OAs should be getting together, talking, and figuring out how they can improve their conditions. That’s the bedrock of how you create social change.”
