What does a university community lose when the people who feed it are treated as expendable?
At first glance, it might seem like the answer is simple: experienced employees. But I think the university loses something far greater. It loses trust.
For four years, universities have asked students to invest in their campuses. They encourage us to wear school colors, attend athletic events, join clubs, build relationships, and eventually become proud alumni who give back to the institution that shaped us. They ask us to believe that a university is more than a collection of classrooms. It is a community.
But communities are measured by how they treat the people whose work often goes unnoticed.
For many students, the cafeteria at CSUB is just another stop between classes. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are served on time, tables are cleaned, and the people who make it happen often disappear into the background. It is then no surprise that hardly any students knew when the dining hall workers, some who had served the school for over twenty years, were let go seemingly out of nowhere.
I spoke with workers who had spent 25, 36, and even more years serving the university. Christina Chambers, a now former employee, told me workers were initially assured they would all be needed under the new provider, only to later learn that many positions would disappear or return as lower-paying part-time jobs.
Faced with the prospect of earning less after more than a decade of service, she decided not to apply, saying, “I can’t afford to do that.”
I understand that budget constraints and vendor changes sometimes require difficult administrative decisions. Universities are not immune to financial realities. What I struggle to understand is why those decisions seemed to leave longtime workers feeling blindsided and disposable.
Hard decisions should still be guided by transparency, dignity, and respect for the people most affected. After speaking with the dining hall workers, I was left wondering whether these standards had been met.
Their stories stayed with me, and I knew that if other students knew, they would not be in vain. I walked around campus handing out flyers with a QR code, provided by the workers’ union leaders, which allowed students to send an email to President Vernon Harper asking the university to guarantee the workers’ rehiring.
Before scanning the code, many students stopped and asked what had happened. Most, if not all, had no idea that the dining hall staff were being let go because of the change in food service providers.
Again and again, I heard the same response: “That’s not fair.”
Some of these students had never spoken to the workers beyond saying a “thank you” at the serving line. Yet, they immediately understood that it was wrong. They did not need to know every detail of the contract change to recognize that decades of service should count for something.
This posed a larger question for me: If decades of dedication can end with workers feeling abandoned, what message does that send to the rest of us?
As a recent CSUB graduate, I cannot ignore that question. Why should students be expected to remain loyal to an institution if that loyalty does not flow both ways? Why should graduates feel compelled to donate, promote the university, or proudly call themselves alumni if the people who quietly kept the campus running for decades can be treated as replaceable?
This is not just about a change in food service providers. It is about whether the values the universities promote—community, belonging, respect, and service—are principles they practice or merely words printed in brochures.
If we want students to leave CSUB with pride in their alma mater, then the university has to demonstrate that every member of its community matters, not only when it is convenient or easy, but especially when difficult decisions are being made.
So, I’ll return to the question I began with: What does a university community lose when the people who feed it are treated as expendable?
It loses trust. It loses credibility. It loses the confidence of students who are told to invest in their university while watching the same university fail to invest in the people who served it faithfully for decades.
If CSUB wants graduates to leave with pride, to remain engaged as alumni, and to believe in the community it promotes, then it must show that loyalty is not a one-way expectation. A university’s values are not measured by what it says in mission statements, but by how it treats the people who make campus life every day possible.
