Campus Life - Letters from Ohio State University

So many students, so many jobs

By Akio Iijima

図書館の一角にある警備員の詰め所

Due to its large student population and campus size, Ohio State University (OSU) is not only a seat of learning, but also one of the largest sources of part-time employment for students. Part-time workers are needed in the more than 200 buildings that are on campus, most of which are filled with academic departments, offices, libraries, athletic facilities and other service desks. I have had three jobs on campus: dorm front-desk clerk, dorm resident advisor and library assistant.

Libraries constitute the largest source of student employment. By itself, OSU has more than 20 libraries, and has probably the largest library collection and network among American colleges. The main library, in which I worked as a library assistant in the East Asian Language Department, has 11 floors and a basement. My job included re-shelving reference books, sending books and periodicals to the bindery and storage sections, writing titles in Japanese in newly bound books and so on. There are many other student jobs in the library, such as coding books, desk work for checkouts and returns, re-shelving and finding requested books, and even being security guards.

Dorms too have many positions available for students. Resident advisors, upperclassmen who take care of younger students in residence, deal with most of the problematic situations in dorms, such as underage drinking and taming young, noisy and spirited students. Residents are employed at the dorm front desk, where their duties are signing out keys to residents who lock themselves out, distributing mail and such.

In addition to regular college-owned businesses such as cafeterias, OSU has its own hospitals, hotels, airports and even golf courses, located only five minutes away from campus, and all these facilities need part-timers. Since Columbus has developed around OSU, which has a population of approximately 50,000 - it is the second largest college in the United States - there are many businesses around campus that also need part-timers.

On-campus jobs have some great pros. The best is location: You can work until 30 minutes before your class begins, or even between morning and afternoon classes. Also, it is close to home as well as to school since most undergraduate students live within a 10-minute walk of campus. When I worked at the dorm front desk, I lived in the place of my work, a minute away from my room.

Another pro is that in comparison to stressful jobs in profit-oriented businesses outside of campus, student jobs on campus are relaxed. It does not mean that students do not take their work seriously, but the working environment is friendly and tolerant. When I worked the night shift at the dorm front desk, all I did was to check the ID of people entering the building and sign out spare keys. Most of the time, I sat there and watched TV or chatted with my co-workers.

However, the biggest con of most on-campus jobs is the wages. The minimum wage is 5.15 dollars (¥618) per hour, and the wage for most on-campus jobs stays close to the minimum. That said, the pay and benefits of a resident advisor are exceptional. The actual payment is not huge, but the room and board is waived, and my practical salary was about 8,000 dollars (about ¥1 million then) for three quarters of the year, although the work was very stressful and ate up a lot of my time.

To me, an on-campus job is ideal because of the convenience of its location, its relaxing atmosphere, and money is not the most important objective for me as a student. Most students focus on studying during their school time, and instead, they work full-time in summer. Studying is so hard and intensive that they do not want to add too much stress to themselves.

Shukan ST: April 11, 2003

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