Flexible hours, great parties, opportunities for advancement, a tight community of coworkers: what’s not to like about working for Students of Georgetown? Their wages. Entry-level Corp employees earn a meager $7.55 per hour—D.C. minimum wage. That’s fine for some students, but too low for others struggling to pay their tuition and living expenses. While the Corp embodies their mission of “Students serving students” in nearly everything they do, they should make paying their employees a decent wage a priority in addition to their outside philanthropic endeavors.
There’s no denying the benefits of Corp Philanthropy for the student body as a whole. The Corp gave out an impressive $44,724 in grants, scholarships, and donations in 2008, almost 70 percent of their profits for the year. A lot of this goes to worthy causes—$3,000 went toward helping incoming freshmen buy their books and $15,000 went toward other scholarships, in addition to donations to various campus charities and student groups. Still, some of the Corp’s benevolence is misguided. Six $500 scholarships were given out last year to students who responded to a one word prompt—“innovation”—without any consideration given to financial need or how the money was to be spent. And while their charitable donations to groups like Blanket New Orleans and After School Kids are doing a lot of good, the Corp should think about giving back a little closer to home.
There’s value to serving the student body as a whole, but the Corp does so at the expense of excluding students who need a decent paying job to pay for living expenses and tuition. Because of their low wages, the Corp only employs Hoyas who can afford to sacrifice the real value of their work for the convenience of an on-campus job and the company’s social atmosphere. This leads to a heterogeneous body of employees that doesn’t reflect Georgetown’s socioeconomic makeup.
The Corp’s dedication to serving students is unquestionable, but its agenda of social responsibility comes with its responsibility as an employer. A 200 employee company that had over $60,000 in profits this past year and almost $140,000 the year before should be able to pay more than minimum wage. And any student should be able to take advantages of what the Corp’s employees enjoy, regardless of their socioeconomic background.
