For decades, faculty and staff on campus and across Oregon have discussed informally how institutional space is allocated, lamenting that premium spaces are reserved for personnel in the highest echelons of the university. It is generally understood that classified staff, entry level positions and programs that are not regarded as “high profile” are located in less-desirable buildings.
Tensions about space allocation reach a pinnacle, and a group of concerned community members organizes to conduct a systematic review of space allocations to determine the efficacy of these informal assumptions. Using simple statistical analyses, the team finds that employees who are classified or make less than $50,000 a year are more likely to reside in buildings determined to be higher-risk. This includes buildings with a history of growing black mold, those that do not currently meet structural requirements to sustain a level-three earthquake, and those that require long walks from parking lots through unlit areas of campus. The team also identities that this same class of employees is less likely to be located in buildings with air-conditioning and tend to not be centrally located on campus, placing them farther from attractive campus amenities like food services and popular gathering spaces.
The group of concerned community members is disappointed by the findings, but not surprised. They determine the best first step is to communicate the findings more broadly. In addition to sending a formal report to the President and Provost, they distribute the findings through a social media marketing campaign targeting students, faculty and staff at the institution. As more folks join the conversation to share their concerns and experiences, the collective consciousness about facility disparities is raised on campus, and formal conversations begin to materialize in academic and administrative units.
- The Issue: A long-held colloquial understanding of disparities in classified reaches a pinnacle of tension on campus. It seems lower-paid and “less prestigious” staff are relegated to less desirable buildings and spaces on campus.
- The Deliberation: A contingent of concerned community members engages in a more formal analysis and confirms the concerns of their peers, and further identifies that the class disparities include the placement of low-paid staff in buildings with increased risks to health and safety.
- The Growth: Community members achieve a level of organization and inquiry that validates their assumptions and use this information to raise collective consciousness and initiate processes with potential for positive change.