<p>I think EVERYONE at college should be required to do some work that helps support the institution (or keep it clean), whether they receive financial aid or not, as an integral part of education (and I know of some very fine institutions where that is the case.)</p>
<p>Mini:</p>
<p>Now that is an idea I can support!</p>
<p>I am an independent and do not cater to left or right. I will not like a policy, which opposes any idea of controlling others to make me equal to them. </p>
<p>To work to earn extra money does not show a weakness for my part or let us say any single human being. If my kid cannot afford a Lexus, he cannot ask other kids to stop driving those cars. After all they are using the fruits of their parents labor or kindness. My kid does not think that he is put down if someone can use a maid. I am glad that school offered my kid a chance to come on full financial aid. If some nice person did not offer to endowment, my kid has no chance to go a prep school. </p>
<p>On other hand if we wait other person to clean the dorm, it may not happen at all. Remember this was the cause that is why communism failed. Every person in society contribute in different ways, let us not make everyone same. Life will be so boring. I rather have different people who can correct and teach my kid why it is important not to feel ashamed in whom he is and where he come from. </p>
<p>My kids friend go to vacation to Europe while mine work in a lab and makes money to support him. Is this bad, not at all? My kid started to clean labs and it allowed him to move on to get paid while doing research as a high school. Please do not punish kids like him by imposing policies, which do more harm than good.</p>
<p>Mini under your program kids like mine will be given meaningless but busy work which will not allow him to choose and pusue passions. You want to create another layer of requiements and choke the development by making everyone subjet to oneros requirements. Let us celeberate diversity? Will you expect a athelete to take a place of a researcher or will you care to listen to music from a person who has no interest in it or will you care to read a poem from a person who does not have any idea about passion? Tell me? Diversity is not a bad thing.</p>
<p>I'm baffled as to why having students who need money work for Dormaid or anybody else is a problem. When did this become an issue?</p>
<p>When he went off to Cambridge in 1661, young Isaac Newton enrolled as a "subsizar", meaning that he had to perform certain domestic duties to help pay for his education. Fast forward a little over 300 hundred years and at my college kids who sought on-campus employment were almost always started out as dorm janitors - cleaning the dorm bathrooms during the wee hours of the morning. Doesn't seem to have hurt Sir Isaac or the kids at my college. No reason why the kids at Harvard should have it any different. It's all part of getting an education and working your way up in life. Some kids need to work in college and some don't. There is nothing new or unusual or demeaning going on here.</p>
<p>Kids choose to work based on their interest and it allows them to develop what they want to do. When I meet a person who is rich or brilliant or have some other qualities, my question to them is what made them driven. Answer is simple passion. </p>
<p>If all the kids start cleaning what will happen to the person who is employed by the university to clean? have you ever thought about it. Let us not blindly make rules which can do more harm than good</p>
<p>My son has had the atypical life experience (for an American that is) of growing up with maids in our home. It is a reality of life in the 3rd world that families employ maids to care for the home- and in turn, they provide care for their maids. He knows that we have supported, educated, saved the lives of countless people affiliated with the people who work for us.</p>
<p>He went off to college knowing that the gravy train of maids had ended and that now he had to change sheets, wash clothes and tidy a bit- he did so with no complaint. Were there a maid service at his school I sincerely doubt he would use his hard earned summer earnings, which are his "living money" for a maid, as opposed to a vacation-for example.</p>
<p>What makes the "haves" "different" if you will, the reason that you would worry about whether or not a life with them will change your child...is not what they actually HAVE it is what they feel ENTITLED to.</p>
<p>Hence, it is irrelevant whether or not Harvard facilitates or resists these services, because they can do nothing about a bred sense of entitlement.</p>
<p>courer you prove my point. I am a benift of this policy. I was allowed to go to undergard degree by working in a lab. This policy of let me choose my work allowed me to be here. I hope it does not end here with these people who wants to impose a communist rule of making all equal. We have innante differnces and we all are equipped and driven with different skills and passsion.</p>
<p>Our school offers maid service. I think the motives are not that altruistic: the school must have found out that keeping the rooms a "bit" clean lowers the cost of maintenance. </p>
<p>That said, wasn't there a report that offering maid service at schools adds to students' confusion? A student had been used to have his mother tell him to pick his room by saying, "Pick up your clothes! Who do you think I am, your maid?" Laying on his bed, during the first week of school, he saw the dorm maid enter and measure the "damage". To his surprise, the first thing he heard was, "Pick up the clothes from the floor! Who do you think I am, your mother?" </p>
<p>Ah, the endless confusion of being young in an adult world!</p>
<p>The only problem I have is that the college sanctions it. Will they soon begin to offer low cost housing options and more expensive housing? Will there be a "budget" meal plan and a "gourmet" meal plan? </p>
<p>I think the difference between this and holding down a work study job is that students make a conscious choice to attend the school, knowing that work study will be needed, prior to making a college choice. Once they arrive on campus, they don't expect the school to further exploit their needs. What good does this bring? I can't imagine why Harvard chose to do this.</p>
<p>A lot of students work in restaurants, as bar tenders, as sales staff in shops patronized by their classmates. How is it different from working for Dormaid?
Let's face it: at Harvard and at many other schools, there are children of billionaires as well as students from far more modest background. They know who they are. The students who need money would probably rather earn that money working on campus than having to go further afield.</p>
<p>Oh god, I'd be thrilled if my son would hire these people just once a year (just before I came to visit). Hell, I'd even pay for it. He won't let me clean his room, and it makes me feel nuts.</p>
<p>At about the age of 10, I asked my mother why she worked when most of the other moms didn't. She said, "so I can hire someone else to clean the house and cook dinner." She hated doing both, and she hired someone who both needed the job and liked the work. And who worked for my mother from 1955 until 1982, when my mother moved away from the area after my father died. (And yes, my mother paid social security for her. And yes, we paid a small pension to her (as well) until she died.)</p>
<p>I am not going to comment on whether the maid service at Harvard and other colleges is an appropriate thing for the college to endorse or not. But as far as the kids being slobs in their rooms, 90% of the mess is their papers, clothes, books, etc strewn around the room. As the students need to find these things when they want them and thus have to know where they are stored, it seems that hiring a maid service would mean that the student would have to tidy up all of their belongings before the maid could actually clean the room. Once this mess has been dealt with, the cleaning part is actually the least of it.</p>
<p>momsdream:</p>
<p>"The only problem I have is that the college sanctions it. Will they soon begin to offer low cost housing options and more expensive housing? Will there be a "budget" meal plan and a "gourmet" meal plan? "</p>
<p>Do not we have people who live in mansions and people who live in poor places. Are you telling me that in order to make every one equal we move everyone in same housing projects? Does it work? Not for a single minute. We know the answers middle class slowly left downtowns (midsize cities of north) and moved to suburbs and cities are left grappling with lot of financial problems and poor school districts. </p>
<p>I do not think elite university can afford to loose its rich clients. Why a rich and intelligent person who will pay full will go to a place which does not allow him to buy what is best for him. And you think as a society we know best what is good for them. If all the rich people will move from elite schools, you will find that lot of poor but bright kids will move along with them as they have no way to pay. Thus as per your policy kids like mine will suffer. In my case I can never afford to send my kids to a prep school. I thank everyday a generous donor who donated money for my kid. </p>
<p>Would you like all people to be brown and no one white, black and they all are 6’0”? Why do you want it to be so? We are all born different and let us remain that way. So stop the policies, which are socially, driven. This will be result in further harm to US businesses and end of good paying jobs. Do not allow policy based on social equalization. One cannot motivate others by making all people look alike. People have inner desire to make themselves better. Let us not go to dark ages when someone else decided others fate. Let people make their own choices.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Why is it demeaning for a student on financial aid to be doing cleaning service but not demeaning to be shelving books
[/quote]
In the middle ages, when I was at Wellesley, BF (later H) was at Harvard on full scholarship/workstudy package. His first workstudy job was to clean dorm rooms in the Houses (toilets, vacuum, the whole nine yards). In later years, he had lab jobs, RA jobs... He never seemed to feel any more demeaned by the former than the latter. I didn't like it, perhaps because I would have felt demeaned; probably because those other jobs lead to "professional careers", and doing others' cleaning has always been a "dead-end" servitude kind of thing? (Not defending that pov,just trying to figure out the why).</p>
<p>I guess Dormaids means they no longer have the finaid students doing this?</p>
<p>Btw, I learned how to vacuum "right" from him and think of him (now ex-H) everytime I clean the vacuum brush.:)</p>
<p>"Mini under your program kids like mine will be given meaningless but busy work which will not allow him to choose and pusue passions."</p>
<p>I have never heard of anyone who was demeaned by manual labor, and, while I apologize in advance, the fact that you think it "meaningless" to me suggests there was something sorely lacking in your education.</p>
<p>I don't think you could possibly make a better case for how the lack of economic diversity can hurt high-income kids at prestigious institutions.</p>
<p>Students on financial aid engage in lots of work that do not lead to "meaningful careers" any more than cleaning bathrooms and bedrooms. But we aren't exercised about the work they do.<br>
One summer in college, I did clerical work for a boss who scolded us if we so much as looked at the ceiling instead of typing and counted the number of minutes were were on bathroom break. That work environment WAS demeaning. It certainly did not pave the way to a career!</p>
<p>I hope you do not see me saying that I am not demeaning labor. If I were I would not be saying that I did clean my department in order to support my family. I am glad the opportunity was there for me. If there is a need one must perform whatever is best for them. Each human being (except if you are mentally handicapped) has qualities, which can guide him to choose whatever he wants to do. On other hand I oppose that others have a right to impose their will on me. Do not allow others to choose and dictate what is good for my kid or me at least. </p>
<p>My education does not lack anything except my English writing skills, which comes due to non-native speaker.</p>
<p>I would be more worried if kids did not have intellectual diversity and opposite point of view. You would find plenty of kids in each race who are equally intellectual and they are the one who provide real changes not changes imposed by social engineers.</p>
<p>We must not forget that this country was founded based on "Individual Rights" not the rights of the society.</p>
<p>I found this forum and it is very valuable to me. I rather debate the points than focusing and down grading people. I also expect similar treatment. Afterall I learn from all of you. I just oppose the policies which I seemed can be wrong.</p>