From student assistants, tour guides and cleaning crew, to football practice cameramen/women, resident assistants and desk attendants; student workers are one of the secret ingredients to making MSU Texas run smoothly. When the university shut down in March, many of the student workers were left without a job. However, a program called ‘The Gold Crew’ put student workers back on their feet and in positions of help for faculty and staff, learning along the way how to combat the pandemic to make their department run efficiently and enforce policy the university has implemented.

There is a certain smell of superiority in the air when comparing on-campus and off-campus jobs. A  kind of superiority that suggests student workers are equivalent to children because of the knowledge that they wouldn’t be working in that position unless they were in school. However, student workers signed on the dotted line to enforce policies, just like someone would for an off-campus job and deserve the same respect.

Mentioning how hard this pandemic has been on individuals is beating a dead horse. However, it is important to remember the community, as a whole, has had it hard, too. When interacting with a student worker, respect them. Respect goes a long way in determining whether someone goes home and is able to look at their day as a success or failure. Enforcing policy is not the failure, the reaction the enforcement of policy determines if a day failed or succeeded.