Across departments, budgets are being slashed in order to cut costs during this economic recession, resulting in a drop in wages and hours for Whitman students who hold jobs.

According to Walter Froese, Controller of Whitman College, the extent of the impact on student wages is hard to ascertain because it is specific to each department.

“Most offices and programs have a discretionary part of their budget which can be spent in many ways: services, supplies, travel and, among other things, student wages,” said Froese. “To the extent such budgets were reduced, it may be difficult to estimate the exact impact on student wages.”

Froese estimates that the net effect on student wages for this year was a decrease in student wages of between $20,000 and $30,000 due to a reduction in hours. To put this in perspective, Whitman spent just under 1.15 million on student wages last fiscal year.

While this doesn’t seem too bad, students in certain departments are feeling these cuts. Junior Sarah Deming works for WCTS as a “gopher”: an assistant to the receptionist in the WCTS office: and has seen her job description expand while her hours decline.

“They eliminated 20 hours of the gopher shift,” said Deming, “and they eliminated the supply manager job altogether.”

Now, in addition to her job as a “gopher” Deming is also required to make sure that certain departments don’t run out of ink, printer paper or other supplies that they might need: a job that used to be done by the supply manager.

However, according to Varga Fox, the director of financial aid services at Whitman, departments are trying to make cuts in areas other than student wages in order to provide students with the hours they need to help meet educational expenses.

“We have, as an institution, made a commitment to students in the form of work-study and will continue to do as much as possible to make jobs available to fulfill that commitment,” said Fox.

Fox did hint that it might be harder for students who are not eligible for work-study to find a job on campus, however.

“It may be more difficult in the future for students who are not eligible for state or federal work-study funding to find positions on campus,” said Fox, “but there will still be jobs for a significant number of students to help pay their educational costs.”

Luckily, the college does expect to receive a similar amount of money from the state and federal government for its work-study program next year, meaning that, at least for next year, hours won’t be cut significantly more.

“The college has very little control over the level of governmental support for Whitman student wages, but both federal and state support is expected to continue at or above current levels,” said Fox. “Furthermore, the college is committed to using the full amount of both state and federal support for student wages each year.   This means students who qualify for these programs, as usual, will have priority for available student jobs.”