OPINIONS

Let’s make PHE stipends equitable

	Joe Troderman Columnist

By: Joe Troderman | Columnist

PHEs make one tenth the salary of RAs ($10,000) on campus despite doing similar amounts of work. They make approximately one seventh that of RCCs while doing more than helping set up Wi-Fi in the first week of school and changing printer paper later. But where RAs officially lead the dorm, build community and promote intellectual life, PHEs often do this too — many RFs consider their entire staff as a team and their PHEs can have on call hours — but they have the added duties of managing physical and mental health issues. Especially in freshman dorms, the time commitment to dorms is not reflective of the $1,000 PHEs receive.

Because of the large time commitment involved in being a PHE, it can be difficult to have a job on top of staffing (especially in fall quarter when establishing dorm community is particularly time-intensive), and so low-income students are effectively selected against for this position. Many low-income students may still become PHEs, but due to the low salary, they have to take on a second job just to fulfill work study requirements. Being a PHE should fulfill any job requirement; it certainly has greater time commitment. But the low salary effectively causes students to be unable to maximally commit to the position, due to economic constraints.

All PHEs are required to take a four-unit PHE-training course the spring before they begin. Moreover, unlike RAs, who only take a two-unit course, PHEs cannot study abroad the spring before they serve as PHE and take that course in fall, as RAs can. It is clear that not only the payment, but also the training requirements, of PHEs and RAs are unequal.

The root of the payment disparity is found in the funding sources of PHEs, RAs and RCCs: PHEs are paid through Vaden as opposed to through ResEd. The PHE Coordinator, Colin Campbell ‘11, confirmed that he has applied for PHE pay equity many times in the past (and is trying again this year), but has never received it. The program was not expanded, in part due to the recent recession. As time has passed, Stanford’s pockets have become heavier; there is little reason why the program should not be expanded now.

But none of this information is new: Student affairs concluded a study on these wages two years ago, at which point ResEd was charged with surveying stakeholders and creating new pay structures. It’s two years later, though, and there has been no response from ResEd. Rumors swirl that ResEd is putting in place a new system through which they will create “health specialist RAs”. Brian Deutsch ‘15 held this role last year in Branner, where it was piloted. But his training was that of a standard RA with no PHE aspects, making him a glorified RA with a healthkit. At the least, ResEd has not informed Campbell of any full-fledged plans to do away with the PHE program and take it under their belt, so such a plan is not being implemented any time soon. A response from ResEd on their plans would be welcome.

ResEd has not taken the appropriate measures to respond to this situation of, essentially, volunteerism on the part of PHEs. The contribution that most PHEs make to their dorms is technically optional; building community and having commonplace events like “tea with the PHE” are not in their job descriptions. Nonetheless, PHEs do these things because they are members of the staff “team” and because knowing their residents makes them better able to do their job of supporting residents and making them feel comfortable in case they ever do need their PHEs for anything more substantial than a band-aid. Their stipends should reflect this.

PHEs do their jobs well because they care, but with such low compensation, there certainly is a sense among many PHEs that they are overworked for their pay. Thus, the low PHE salary is dissuading for some students, and may not incentivize the best work from those who do participate. Unfortunately, this is to the detriment of students’ mental and physical health. And considering that ResEd is supposedly concerned with the physical and mental well-being of students, their lack of response is alarming. A lack of money would be a dubious excuse, as would be any statement that the issue is with Vaden, given that Student Affairs, which manages ResEd, has already looked into this matter.

But there is a simple solution to this problem: maintain the PHE program exactly as it is, but have contracts through ResEd that are at parity with RA contracts. Arguably, PHEs might even deserve a greater salary than RAs, given that they essentially perform the duties of an RA, but with more extensive training and added health responsibilities. But for the time being, multiplying the salary by 10 to put it on the same level as an RA salary, would be a good first step.

Contact Joe Troderman at jtrod93 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

About Joe Troderman

Joe Troderman is a columnist for The Stanford Daily. He is a member of the class of 2016 from Canton, Mass. (it's near Boston) pursuing a major in chemical engineering. Joe is passionate about the environment and enjoys playing poor-quality improvisational music on any stringed instrument he can find. To contact him, please mail him at jtrod93 'at' stanford.edu or P.O. Box 13387, Stanford, Calif. (even if it is just ad hominem attacks on his character, it will make his day to receive a letter that isn't for car insurance or bank accounts).

hyperActiv

I agree that PHEs need to be payed like RAs. I think you’re quite harsh on RCCs though. They also usually take on comparable workloads to RAs in freshman dorms and also teach a class each week on Sundays. If the point of your article is that PHEs are not getting paid for their informal workload, then minimizing the role of the RCC to its formal description suffers from the same logical flaw that you berate ResEd for making.
Anonymous

I’m with you. I totally agree that PHEs need to be paid more, but the author didn’t need to belittle RCCs to prove that point. Maybe it’s because I’m in a dorm with freshmen, but I actually work more hours per week than I get paid for by my RCC contract. And trust me, I’m not just changing paper for 10 hours straight.
RCCupport

I believe RCCs are paid supplimentally for the class they teach, on top of their normal salary. Your point about minimizing the role to formal description is spot on though!
In Lantana

Well I just want my RCC to change the printer paper! How many times have I tried to print something to find no paper? I’m not sure what he’s doing besides not changing the paper, but I just want him to do that one basic job that he is paid for.
’17

Hmm, I’m not convinced. First of all, the argument that people should be paid according to what the employer can afford is outright silly and should never have been brought up. People should be paid according to the value they provide — and Troderman makes good points here, to his credit. But I don’t think I agree with these points. In my experience, the PHE has done very little. I don’t think optionally socializing for an hour a week is too hard, and neither is sending out occasional emails. I wish he would have elaborated on the time commitment aspect (he details next to nothing) because I would like to know what they actually do. I mean if students are willing to do the job at this salary it must not be that underpaid. In fact, as he points out, if it was so underpaid, people would just get jobs elsewhere — and that’s what many people do.
’13

Perhaps you haven’t seen much value in the PHE system because you have been lucky enough to make it through the year strong and healthy. But trust me: there are residents in your dorm/house who are currently in need of support or advice, and the PHE is on their short list. These specialized staff members take their spring quarter class before working on staff to be trained in depression symptoms, eating disorders, physical/sexual health and education, alcohol education and safety, and sexual assault and relationship abuse cases. AT LEAST one case of ALL of these problems will occur within a freshman dorm in one year. And the PHE is there for education and support. The socializing and tea time is, quite honestly, downtime programming for the PHE as well, and a wonderful way to open channels of communication for students who might not have initially been comfortable talking about the hard stuff, or walking into a staff member’s room for emotionally charged issues! This is a HUGE job, and it deserves that recognition.
Anonymous

Like all staff positions, some will go above and beyond and others will do the bare minimum. In my experience, I have had one above and beyond PHE and two just did the bare minimum to earn their stipend. During my one big breakdown (during a bare minimum PHE year), it was my RA and (oddly) my RT who came to the rescue and were my rocks during that hard time.

So, like with any staffing position, some will go above and beyond, but what is actually required in a PHE contract isn’t much at all. If only there were a way to differentiate the PHEs who do so much more and act like supplementary RAs and reward them as such.
Former PHE

I worked as a PHE in a four-class dorm last year and I agree with a lot of what’s said here. It was a drag to be paid so much less than the rest of the staff; it felt like the University didn’t value our work in the same way. Sometimes it also made me feel insecure about my role among the rest of the house staff, as if they didn’t need to take me seriously, even though I had as much training as they did, if not more.

I regularly spent 7 or 8 hours per week on dedicated work for the PHE position, not to mention training or unstructured time spent talking to my residents. I would imagine this is comparable to the experience of other PHEs. Over the course of the quarter, the pay amounts to less than $5 an hour, well under both California minimum wage and the wages the University pays students for other jobs on campus (around $14 an hour).

PHEs certainly don’t do the job for money, but using that as an excuse not to pay them comparable amounts is a lousy argument.