A group of Miami University students hopes to highlight and appreciate the university's maintenance and dining staffs through a social media campaign.
The Miami University Workers Appreciation (MUWA) initiative was born out of a class project. The students believe university staff are often disrespected by students and hope their efforts can give those individuals recognition for what they do on campus.
Sam Pfieffer, Keyon Cohen-Harris, Brooke Schmidt, Megan Bowers, Alexa Ward and Cole Uzat started the campaign as a project for their class on innovation, creativity and design thinking.
The class was tasked with forming a program that could positively impact the university and the Oxford community.
Pfieffer, a sophomore finance major, runs the program's Instagram account.
"My parents raised me with the mindset that I should show the trashman the same amount of respect that I would show to the president," Pfeiffer said. "Therefore, I took the initiative to know and understand [one of the university cooks] at the end of last spring."
The group found that many staff workers felt underappreciated on campus, as corroborated by The Miami Student's reporting.
"People would yell at me when things weren't in stock," Lauren Ferrell, a student worker said of her time at McCracken Market. "People can be pretty harsh here."
Although some Miami staff members believe they are often mistreated, Ray James, a dining hall employee, has had a positive experience working in dining on campus.
"Personally, I have not had a problem here," James said. "The students were actually the ones to convince me to register for classes."
After meeting with various staff workers across campus and hearing their concerns, the group decided to spread their message via social media and conducted a student survey to gauge student interest in the movement.
After surveying 100 people, MUWA found 75 said they would use a digital messaging app to encourage workers. Additionally, 82 said they would participate in an appreciation week.
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"We want to create a shift in mindset," Pfieffer said. "The maintenance and dining hall staff work incredibly hard. It's absolutely grueling labor, and they're not getting recognition. It's not appropriate at all and needs to change."
The organization's first social media post acknowledged Adam Klemin, a chef at Martin dining hall who has been working for the university for 15 years.
The post received 17 comments regarding Adam's accomplishments, and the account itself currently has 64 followers.
"The first post had a lot of traction and popularity, so that was a huge success for us," Pfieffer said.
Outside of the social media account, MUWA expressed interest in taking various actions such as sending a weekly email to students announcing a worker of the week, investing in hanging a banner on campus sharing a positive message directed at staff workers and creating a mural on the edge of Uptown and campus that would promote work done by the Miami service staff.
"The ultimate measure of our success is determining whether or not there has been a change in the way students treat maintenance and dining hall staff," Pfieffer said.
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