Scripps College relies heavily on its maintenance and support staff for its day-to-day operation. Working behind the scenes, it’s almost impossible to quantify how critical they are in keeping the campus functioning – so Claire Calderón ’12 set out to give them a voice.
“This is an invisible network I wasn’t conscious of,” she says. “It filled my head with questions; I couldn’t sleep without trying to answer them.”
The end result is Claire’s senior thesis – “Vital and Unseen: An Investigation of Service Workers’ Role and Experience at Scripps College – which examines the historical role of service workers at Scripps in comparison to the College’s stated commitment to an inclusive multicultural community.
“As a women’s college, we have a unique opportunity to address the unjust invisibility of service labor with the same vehemence with which we target sexism,” she says. “How can we, as community members, re-imagine our own roles in order to give higher value to staff contributions to Scripps?”
Claire’s thesis coupled historical research with interviews of contemporary staff to create a blueprint for bettering College support for its workers. She asked them about their campus observations, their daily routines and interactions, and more.
“My project is about human beings, so naturally their stories are dynamic,” she says. “The most rewarding part of my thesis was having the privilege of getting to know some service staff members; the most challenging part was coming to terms with the fact that I am not a superhero.
“My time at Scripps has had a tremendous impact on my intellectual and personal development. So, out of love, I challenge Scripps to improve; to realize the full potential of its mission and pay homage to the workers who do so much for this community.”
Now a recent graduate, Claire says she still is learning from the lessons taught by her thesis. Every day she works to appreciate the labor and people that may be taken for granted and hopes to work in criminal justice reform or advocacy for Latin American women immigrants, where she can further explore the interests she developed at Scripps.