<body><div><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1HeqKx_0vjq27bm00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1HeqKx_0vjq27bm00" width="1200" height="630" >For Gordon Commons—colloquially referred to as “the Deece” by members of the Vassar community—the start of the 2024-25 school year was marked by several prominent cosmetic improvements. However, a Sept. 13th Instagram post from the Vassar Student Labor Dialogue (SLD) criticized the attention given to Gordon Common’s renovations in light of the poor working conditions of the dining hall’s dish room. The post explained that there have been serious issues in the dish room for several months, stating, “The [dish] machine is constantly leaking, making the area hazardous for workers…The College is not planning to properly fix the machine until next summer, which is simply not soon enough…The College is therefore prioritizing cosmetic changes to the front-of-house instead of workers’ safety and wellbeing.”“It’s nice they did the tables, don’t get me wrong,” said one Gordon Commons employee in an interview with The Miscellany News, referring to the newly varnished dining tables. “But you mean to tell me you didn’t care about the people and try to get that [dish] machine fixed?” For privacy purposes, all Gordon Commons employees will remain anonymous. There are two main issues contributing to the condition of the dish room. An undersized drain caused flooding when too much food made it past the strainer, a struggle which persisted from the start of summer into the beginning of Fall 2024 semester. Additionally, steam has been building up in the room due to a lack of ventilation, creating extreme humidity.In an interview with The Miscellany News on Sept. 16, SLD member Julian Gross ’26 said, “There are puddles covering up the entire dish room, and what they have is a drain with a one-inch diameter pipe, which is insufficient to drain it.” SLD is in regular communication with both employees and administrators, which has allowed the organization to learn key facts about the situation. “The College’s plans at this point are to replace that with a four-inch wide pipe…the College says that in order to install that, they would need to go down into the basement, take all the food out of the freezers and open up the ceiling to install the pipe,” Gross added. Because of this, SLD advocates were told by administrators that replacing the drain pipe would have to wait until Gordon Commons could be closed for a significant period of time, either during winter or summer break.“An undersized drain for the strainer led to flooding when too much food made it past the strainer,” Dean of the College for Campus Activities Dennis Macheska confirmed in written correspondence with The Miscellany News on Sept. 20. However, he asserted that the drain problem has since been addressed by Facilities Operations: “The drain was reworked on 9/18, which we hope solves the issue.” He added that there are no further anticipated repairs. Facilities Operations installed a PVC pipe, which directs excess water from the dish washing machine to the drain. To date, the pipe has eliminated the occurrence of daily floods. But several Gordon Commons employees have complained about the manner in which dining management has addressed the flooding problem. One employee recounted approaching maintenance workers on Sept. 17: “It’s crazy because a few weeks ago they said that they couldn’t fix [the pipe] until December. It took me really forcing them. When I forced it, that’s when they came over and fixed it. They should’ve done it a couple weeks ago. Why do we have to be going through all of this?”The employee added that the PVC pipe is a temporary solution. SLD expressed similar frustrations, with member Malia Weiss ’26 writing to The Miscellany News, “[T]he kind of mixed communication, or lack of communication, we’ve seen between manager/administrators and workers has been a problem for as long as we’ve been talking to people, especially in the Deece. The reason we’re getting such mixed answers in terms of when the College is actually planning to get this done is because our information is from workers who are getting multiple different answers. So we’re all left wondering: when is the dish room going to get fixed? And it’s not cool to not know.”Communication between Gordon Commons managers with Gordon Commons employees and SLD has been complicated by the fact that many managers are new hires who recently transitioned into their roles. Macheska explained this change, writing, “The transition that took place shifted the responsibility of managing Vassar staff from our third-party contractor Bon Appétit to Vassar.” Maxine Coleman, Assistant Vice President for Facilities Operations, clarified the repair timeline for the drain via email correspondence, writing, “Initially, we thought the only solution was to re-pipe to a larger pipe, which would have required dismantling part of the freezer and could only be done when Gordon Commons was closed due to the extensive nature of the work. After subsequent investigation, however, our plumbers discovered a floor drain that they were able to tie the dishwasher into and that didn’t require closing the kitchen.”Prior to the installation of the PVC pipe, workers dealt with flooding on a daily basis. Each morning, Gordon Commons staff were greeted by a large, ankle-deep puddle of water which they would have to mop up in order to continue with their respective tasks, a Gordon Commons employee said in an interview. The piping issue raised concerns of employee safety. “It is inhumane to work in a kitchen flooding with water,” an employee who works in the dish room shared. “We have to look out for our safety.”There is a significant precedent to these concerns. Last semester, one Gordon Commons employee was injured after slipping on water from a leaking sink at a station in the dining hall, landing on their side and displacing a disc in their spine. Despite reporting the leak weeks prior to the accident, the sink was not fixed until approximately two weeks later.Addressing the humidity problem in the dish room has also been a slow process. Macheska wrote in his email that Facilities Operations cannot install new ventilation while Gordon Commons is in operation, meaning that the building will have to close before renovations begin. Workers’ frustrations with the dish room are further exacerbated by issues with appliances, such as the dishwasher, which have resulted in increased manual labor. Because of the maintenance problems with the dishwasher, employees must hand-wash all dishes and cutlery and are unable to run the items through the sanitary rinse cycle. This has resulted in reports from both workers and students that the dishes in the dining hall are not clean.“I hear a lot of complaints from all the other employees that things are not getting cleaned,” said one Gordon Commons employee. “Even the managers say that things are not getting cleaned but they automatically say it’s the workers, that we’re not doing our job. But it’s not us not doing our job, you’ve got six or seven people working in the dishroom on a daily basis.”Without the ability to put dishes through the sanitary rinse cycles, Gordon Commons workers have expressed concerns about hygiene issues for people eating off of the dishes. A Miscellany News reporter visited the dish room and was able to observe the loud, hot and humid conditions that employees work in. Dishes are washed in murky, light brown water after being transported on a plastic conveyor belt. Underneath the tracks of the conveyor belt, dark colored mold lines the metal basin. Mold has also grown on the pipes and food scraps collector, in addition to lining the metal underneath the conveyor belt that dishes are rinsed on, and water coats the floor by the sinks.“I don’t know what’s going to happen with the molding, but come on,” said a member of the dining hall’s staff. “That should not be happening with people eating and carrying on.”The dishwasher’s state of disrepair has also presented challenges for cooks in the dining hall kitchen. Without the resources to efficiently clean pots, pans and cooking utensils, the production of food has slowed significantly. In the face of various challenges, employees have highlighted the benefits of students calling attention to their working conditions. In an SLD community meeting on Sept. 20th, one dining employee expressed, “If you [students] voice your opinions, they’ll be heard, while ours will be brushed off most of the time.” Class of 2026 Senator Connor Dalgaard, writing in an email correspondence to The Miscellany News stated, “As the Chair of the Residential Affairs Committee, I was very concerned when I learned about the conditions in the dish room. We, as students, should encourage Vassar to create safe and healthy work environments for all of its employees.”SLD spread a petition calling for a new dish machine, which has subsequently gained over 400 signatures, through their Instagram page and in-person tabling. In regard to this, Macheska wrote, “The dish machine in the Gordon Commons does not need to be replaced and to do so would be wasteful and unnecessary. [T]he plumbing and venting needs to be replaced for the current machine to work effectively.”While much of the labor that goes into maintaining Vassar’s daily operations occurs away from the view of students, SLD advocates have emphasized the importance of remaining aware of these issues. Weiss wrote, “[I]t feels like part of this lack of attention and urgency is because we can’t see what’s happening back there…You can sometimes hear folks when you’re putting your dishes away, but you can’t see the people who are actually cleaning those dishes. It almost feels like this big mechanical robot is washing your dishes. I think this creates a real disconnect and a lack of incentive to fix the problem.”During the community meeting, Gordon Commons employees expressed that the relationship between Vassar’s employees and students is often one of mutual care. “We hear time and time again from employees of the College that we’re the people who make this a place they love…I think we as students reciprocate that and want that relationship,” Gross said. “We really just want to appreciate the workers who do such good things for us and who are mistreated by the College.”Additional reporting by Sarah McNeil and Makenna Monaghan.</div></body>

Mountain View, CA

NewsBreak

Workers, Students Protest Working Conditions in Gordon Commons

For Gordon Commons—colloquially referred to as “the Deece” by members of the Vassar community—the start of the 2024-25 school year was marked by several prominent cosmetic improvements. However, a Sept. 13th Instagram post from the Vassar Student Labor Dialogue (SLD) criticized the attention given to Gordon Common’s renovations in light of the poor working conditions of the dining hall’s dish room.