'Essential' staff and dining halls during the storm: a few considerations

With grave blizzard weather forecasts came worried advice from parents and families to “buy milk and eggs” and “stock up on cereal and canned soup”— warnings warranted by the blizzard, Juno, which all but debilitated the city of Boston and the surrounding area for nearly two days. But what may ease the minds of worried loved ones is the knowledge that, as college students, a lot is often handed to us on a silver platter — including an all-you-can-eat buffet seven days a week and even, apparently, after a huge amount of snow blankets campus.

During the two days of campus closings due to inclement weather on Jan. 27 and 28, both Carmichael and Dewick-MacPhie Dining Halls remained open for their full hours of operation, and while 5,000 undergraduates enjoyed a break from classes and fun on the hill in this Medford/Somerville snow globe, a population of “Essential Staff” on campus remained hard at work, ensuring that the wheels of campus operations kept turning and that these students remained fed.

A remarkable 16 members of Tufts Dining Staff stayed overnight on campus to avoid having to drive to work in the morning for the start of their shifts, which begin as early as 5:30 a.m. While Tufts Dining does not require employees to stay over, and does not compensate them financially for the time spent away from home and time sleeping, they are required to work during school closings. Those who didn’t decide to sleep on campus on the cots and air mattresses provided by the university recounted stories of having to leave their homes for work hours earlier than usual, either to shovel themselves out of their driveways or walk down unplowed roads.

And while the members of Tufts Dining Staff and other employees who braved the elements to come in to work during the blizzard are, undeniably, the superheroes of this story, a few questions cannot simply be ignored. Should the Dining Hall staff be considered “Essential Staff,” so that they’re required to work their full shifts during campus closings? And, if so, should they not be compensated for their time overnight? Is there no other solution to this problem that must be dealt with nearly every year in the Northeast?

Can students not manage to feed themselves for one or two days during weather emergencies? As young adults, this seems like exactly the situation that should teach us how to take personal responsibility and prepare for the near future of “real-world” life. Of course, students on financial aid who rely on their meal plans to support them throughout the academic year should be taken into consideration when weighing the merits of closing campus dining for one or two whole days, for it may not be financially feasible for all students to go out in preparation for an impending storm and stock up on enough food to hold them over until the roads are cleared, but other solutions are surely available. Perhaps this situation could be approached similarly to that of dining over holiday breaks, for which students planning to stay on campus may contact Tufts Dining in advance and receive a meal allowance in JumboCash with which to buy food. While winter storms and weather emergencies are not often anticipated long enough in advance for students to request this service in the same way, perhaps it could be built into some facet of financial aid, where the stipend is automatically allotted with the announcement of a school closing.

And all of this is not to say that Tufts University students aren’t entirely grateful for and aware of the hard work and dedication that all of the campus’ “Essential Staff” put into their roles every day, and especially during times of emergency, or that these employees do not enjoy their jobs or take the challenges of working during a blizzard in stride. It is only to acknowledge the fact that a “thank-you” sign in Dewick may not be enough to compensate for not having the option of weathering the storm in one’s own home, that overtime pay may not be enough to merit sleeping in the dining halls overnight away from one’s loved ones and family and that perhaps better solutions exist to a problem that we face every single year.