100 signatures reached
To: The University of Wisconsin-Madison Administration including the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs
The Open Seat Demand for a Full-Time Staff Member
The Open Seat demands that the University do the following:
- Provide The Open Seat Food Pantry with a full-time (40 hours/week) professional staff member dedicated solely to pantry operations.
- Ensure a competitive salary and benefits package to recruit and retain a qualified candidate for said full-time position.
- Ensure that said full-time staff position is permanent and institutionally funded, not a limited-term appointment or funded through student segregated fees.
- Ensure The Open Seat student staff have meaningful hiring authority, including a student hiring committee co-chair and power to reject candidates who are not a strong fit at any stage of the hiring process.
- Provide tuition remission for the Graduate Student Advisor - ensuring that they can adequately support pantry operations and student staff.
Why is this important?
The Open Seat is UW-Madison’s student-run food pantry. We consist of 8 part-time staff, including 7 undergraduates and 1 graduate student. We distribute over 32,000 pounds of food per month to over 2,500 students. In addition to pantry operations, our student staff oversee volunteer coordination, financial management, campus-wide outreach, food drives, and emergency responses. We are proud of what we have built. But we are also overworked, overwhelmed, and stretched beyond what students alone can reasonably sustain. We routinely miss classes to keep the pantry open and are constantly on-call, ready to manage the next crisis. The burden on our well-being and academics is heavy. We do this work for an hourly wage and without paid time off, the guarantee of good healthcare, or tuition remission. We do this work because we care, but we can not continue to shoulder this responsibility alone.
For years, we have called on the University to provide our organization with meaningful, institutional support. In response, we have received vague assurances that they will help when “the time is right” and “budgets allow.” We believe that the time is now and student well-being is worth the investment. Demand for emergency food support continues to rise as students face increasing grocery prices and economic uncertainty. While the University delays action, student staff and shoppers alike are forced to make impossible tradeoffs between their education, health, and basic needs. A University that prides itself on student success cannot continue to rely on underpaid students to sustain a critical-needs service of this scale. UW-Madison students deserve better, and we need your help.
By signing this petition, you help us to send a clear message to the University: supporting student basic needs cannot wait.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at [email protected].
Join our email campaign to tell UW-Madison administration why you support this campaign: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ck_SpudhpUfVciI8f14utalHHCv3_TMvSNJYmL6eXtU/edit?usp=sharing