The Newest Union Members Are Undergrads

Sam Betsko figured out fast that being a resident assistant in a college dorm would demand more than helping locked-out students and pleading with sophomores to, for the love of God, turn down the music. In her role at Boston University, there were days of compulsory, unpaid training, and the specter of arbitrary discipline from bosses. She had to prepare to respond to emergencies like a student’s anxiety attack or sexual assault. Then she learned that some resident assistants had been assigned to work far more than others — without extra compensation — in a gig that offered no more than housing, a meal plan, tickets to school events and a weekly stipend that could barely buy a drink. The resident assistants, she thought in 2021, needed a union.