Starting in the summer of 2026, Grinnell College intends to stop offering complimentary housing and meals to students working Reunion or any other positions prior to or after an academic semester.
During the 2025-26 academic year, students working in these positions, which include Community Advisors and those working Peer-Connections Pre-Orientation Program, New Student Orientation and Grinnell Science Project, will still be compensated during periods immediately preceding and following student arrival and departure.
The reason for this change lies in Article 6 of the contract between the College and the Union of Grinnell Student Dining Workers. The article set a base wage of $13.50 at the time of its ratification for all student worker positions besides Community Advisors, who can either choose to be compensated with a room grant or the $13.50 hourly base wage.
“Compensation for all student workers, including Reunion, Orientation and Pre-Orientation workers, must comply with the agreement,” wrote Ellen de Graffenreid, vice president of marketing and communications, in an email to The S&B. “Moving forward, the College intends to honor the unambiguous language included in the collective bargaining agreement and compensate student workers as outlined in Article 6 of that agreement through the use of a uniform wage, with an exception only for Community Advisors, as noted in the contract.”
Members of the Union disagree with the position that providing workers with compensated housing and food would directly break the contract.
“We looked through the contract and there’s nothing in there that prohibits the College from providing food and housing,” said Donovan Wilcox `27, who is both a member of the Union and a Reunion worker for this summer. “But we were able to figure out how they were using the contract, in our opinion, as an excuse to prohibit food and housing by interpreting a vague statement in the contract.”
Originally, Reunion student workers were informed by email on March 4 that they would not be compensated with housing and meal benefits during Reunion this summer. In this email, students were told they could purchase on-campus housing for $300 and a meal plan for $340.
After this announcement, Mufrad Chowdhury `27, a Reunion worker for this summer whose position involves him managing staff schedules and hours, said he attempted to allocate as many hours as he could to the Reunion staff.
“I was trying to find ways how I can maximize hours, how can I minimize this damage as much as possible,” he said. “We were running all of these calculations.”
If a Reunion worker were to work 40 hours for the two weeks of Reunion, they would make $1,080. The meal plan and housing that they could purchase from the College would come out to a cost of $640.
Three weeks later, on March 28, the College sent an email to students working during Reunion, pre-orientation and orientation periods stating that they would, in fact, be provided with complimentary housing and food, as they had already been offered these benefits during the hiring process.
“So it was just three weeks of stress for no reason,” Chowdhury said. “And it was also hard because I had four or five staff that were resigning because of the situation.” Chowdhury said that most of these Reunion workers who resigned have returned after the reinstatement of complimentary housing and food.
After the Union was informed of these changes to student worker benefits, they drafted a memorandum of understanding – a signed agreement between two parties – to propose another exception for students working during Reunion and late departure and early arrival periods. The College has not yet agreed to add this memorandum to the contract, Wilcox said.
Now, a return to the bargaining table may be underway for the 2025-26 academic year.
“I think after we have one more informal meeting with them, we’ll be able to assess how stubborn they are and whether it’s possible to convince them or whether we need to go back to collective bargaining,” Wilcox said. The Union and the College held this meeting on Friday, April 18.
“Next year, we can fight this battle again,” Wilcox added. “We’re still debating strategy. It is possible that we could make a legal argument against them.”
The current contract between the College and the Union expires in 2027. In the new contract, Wilcox said that the Union will bargain for complimentary housing and food for students working during Reunion, pre-orientation and orientation. They will also bargain for the same benefits for Community Advisors during the late departure and early arrival periods.
