It was late one night, and I was riding one of the Colby shuttles back to campus when I asked the driver how she was doing. I did not expect the question to turn into a conversation about work.
At the time, the College needed more shuttle drivers. According to the driver, people would get hired, stay for a while, and then leave because the pay was not good enough. She said some schools in Fairfield paid better and believed that was one reason many of the drivers who stayed were older. She was considering leaving too.
I have thought about that conversation several times since then. It came back to me again this semester as students moved into the College’s new residential community on Mayflower Hill. The building houses more than 200 juniors and seniors and sits between Cotter Union and Diamond.
For the students living there, it is already becoming another part of campus life. But not long ago, it was a construction site.
We tend to see the finished version of the College. We see the residence halls, classrooms, dining halls, athletic facilities, and landscaped grounds. What is easier to overlook are the people who built those spaces and the people whose work keeps them running.
That part of the College’s story is not new.
In 1950, while the Mayflower Hill campus was still being built, Paul Christopher `51 was living two very different Colby lives. He was a student studying history and government, but he was also a laborer helping to construct the new campus.
Christopher became involved in a dispute over wages. According to the College’s archive on activism and social justice, skilled workers had received raises while common laborers had not. The Common Laborers’ Union asked for an increase from 25 to 40 cents an hour. The College approved ten cents.
The workers went on strike in November. Other workers refused to cross the picket line, and construction on Mayflower Hill stopped.
Christopher argued in a Nov. 10, 1950 edition of The Colby Echo that one dollar an hour, which left workers with about $37 in take-home pay each week, was not enough to live on. He later remembered that many of his fellow students did not support the strike and saw him as a “trouble maker.”
What makes Christopher’s story interesting to me is the position he occupied. He was one of the students the College was building the new campus for, while also being one of the workers actually building it.
More than 75 years later, most students experience the College from only one side of that relationship.
We know when the shuttle is late. We notice when something breaks in a residence hall. We know when the dining hall is crowded, when the sidewalks have not been cleared, or when some part of campus is not working the way we expect it to.
It is much easier to notice the service than the person doing the work.
That is why the conversation with the shuttle driver stayed with me. One conversation cannot tell me what every employee thinks about working here. Her comments about pay and turnover are her experience, not something I can apply to everyone. But they made me think more about how often students depend on workers we know very little about.
Shuttle drivers, dining workers, custodians, grounds crews, maintenance staff, and many others make daily life on Mayflower Hill possible. As the College keeps building and expanding, that work grows with it.
Students have already moved into the newest residence hall. We will get used to seeing it very quickly. Soon enough, it will probably feel as though it has always been there. But buildings do not appear on their own, and once they are built, they do not keep themselves running.
When we talk about the College’s history, we usually talk about presidents, donors, professors, and alumni. Their names are attached to buildings, programs, and parts of campus.
Paul Christopher’s story reminds us that another group has always been part of the College’s history too. These are the people who do the work that allows the rest of us to experience the College the way we do.
~ Stephen Owusu Badu `27
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