Dissonance

There’s a time and place to be a proud Wash U student. That place might be during a Christmas gathering with family, or when a student researcher makes a major breakthrough. But in those places where the Wash U sprawl has gentrified the area, or where drunken college students disrupt the peace, it’s best to keep Wash U affiliations under wraps. Throughout my four years at this institution, I’ve developed some intuition about when to mention my student status and when to keep quiet. The golden rule that I’ve lived by, however, is to never mention the school specifically unless asked directly. As my time as a college student comes to a close, I’ve begun to reflect on why this is the case. The honest answer I’ve come up with is that there is a massive disconnect between Wash U’s mission and the reality of its actions.

The Brown School is one of the world’s best institutions for research and programs in social work and public policy, and it is a great source of pride and joy for Washington University. Researchers at the Clark-Fox Policy Institute, a branch of the Brown School, found that even within Missouri, a $15/hour minimum wage was necessary for a person to purchase the bare necessities. The policy proposal falls in line with nationwide movements aimed at raising the national minimum wage to $15/hour, a figure cited to be a livable wage enough to sustain a family, and one that keeps up with inflation. Yet most campus workers themselves usually only make $8-$9 an hour, with housekeepers topping out at $12 an hour. The workers at campus-based businesses like Subway or Starbucks have minimum wages set by the corporations themselves, so they fall out of purview of the university. But for the other workers, including graduate students, the amount they are paid does not fall in line with what the university itself claims to be a livable wage. For an institution that prides itself on being forward thinking, Wash U has great difficulty making positive changes, even going against its researchers’ own findings. This inconsistency in its intention versus its actions, however, is not only endemic to the university itself, but extends to the Saint Louis Community as well.

Washington University, in conjunction with Saint Louis University, UMSL, and the Missouri Botanical Gardens, unveiled plans to foster innovation and growth within St. Louis through the Cortex Innovation Community. The plan involves investing a total of $2 billion to provide facilities for biomedical and technological research, encompassing a total of over 200 acres of real estate. The initiative sounds promising, especially with the fresh surge of jobs that would fill the area. And while the injection of St. Louis jobs will elevate the overall status of the city, there are some serious downsides that the communities impacted face. As more businesses move into the area, the housing cost will continue rising, displacing the residents that live there and forcing them elsewhere. While the benefit of the Cortex Innovation Community has a lot of benefits for the city of St. Louis, it has the potential to do serious harm to the local residents in the coming years.

[su_pullquote]There still exists a gap to cross between the university’s values and actions.[/su_pullquote]Even on the global stage, Wash U seems to engage in heavy dissonance. The environmental and chemical engineering departments have many labs that focus on researching renewable alternatives to fossil fuels that show promise, like solar power, and even research that points to the significant problems with using coal, “clean” or otherwise. The environmental studies and public health departments have both shown beyond a shadow of doubt the disastrous impact of climate change and the role fossil fuels play in it. They even indicate how investment in renewables is not only economically feasible, but also fiscally prudent in the coming decades. Wash U stands by the research that these departments put out, but it also has initiatives within the environmental engineering department focused on research into processing and refining “clean” coal. The Board of Trustees still refuses to divest from fossil fuels and continues the support of archaic practices that will continue to damage the region, country, and world for generations to come.

[su_pullquote align=”right”]As long as this gap exists, there will always be a level of dissonance in the minds of many that call WashU home.[/su_pullquote]Washington University is not monolithic. There are many different faces to each initiative, department, and interest that the institution pursues. No matter what an individual or organization under the umbrella of the university pursues, however, the Wash U name is always attached to the actions and achievements. But for a university that encourages students to make strides in medicine, policy, community engagement, and other efforts, it makes startlingly little effort to listen to those same students when called out on their doublespeak. There still exists a gap to cross between the university’s values and actions. And as long as this gap exists, there will always be a level of dissonance in the minds of many that call WashU home.

Akshay Thontakudi ‘19 studies in the School of Engineering & Applied Science. He can be reached at a.m.thontakudi@wustl.edu.