Thank God for the Living Wage

People at Harvard have always been interested in my political views. I’m overbearingly opinionated, I’m a foreign student and I was president of The Crimson. I was expected to have views on just about everything—and usually, I did. But over the course of my four years here, I was forced to completely rethink why I thought what I did. The fulcrum of my about-face: the Living Wage Campaign.

As a Harvard first-year, my political sentiments seemed compatible with my surroundings. I adopted a core of unadulterated liberalism and began to feel out America’s politics with respect to those of my home country, Canada. It took me a while to sort out the Democrats from the Republicans, but eventually the two-party system was second nature: Democrats were like Canada’s Liberals. Not too far left, but left of center nonetheless. The Republicans were about the same distance to the right. It was simple to place myself on the scale, of course: I was left of the Democrats. For two years, I marched to the beat of Clinton’s drum.

Then, in April 2001, a group of students took over Mass. Hall in an effort to coerce the University into paying higher wages to its employees. The campus erupted in a bubbling froth of assorted reactions. The Crimson’s editorial page was laden with letters from people all over America. As the president of The Crimson, I was expected to have an opinion on the matter.

Despite early support for the sit-in, students seemed to lose their enthusiasm for the living wage the longer the sit-in dragged on. Student opponents began to speak out against the Living Wage Campaign, and they did so with as much organization and rhetorical skill as the living wagers. They asked pragmatic questions that still remain unanswered. What are the long-term implications of a wage floor? If the University paid higher wages, wouldn’t higher-skilled non-immigrant workers fill these jobs anyway? Wouldn’t that just throw immigrants out of work? Why is the market system in need of arbitrary and permanent readjustment? Why are these students demanding they face no disciplinary action—don’t they believe enough in what they’re doing to suffer the consequences of their actions? The list of unanswered questions seemed endless.

The living wage’s opposition began to erode the thin veneer of liberalism that shrouds Harvard’s deepest secret—its inner core of fiscal conservatism. Yes, students at the college are liberal, but only socially. But being liberal is more than supporting women’s equality or gay rights. To be truly liberal and progressive, you’d better be willing to toss aside more than just your parents’ stodgy views on race in America. You’ve got to toss aside corporate profits, individual wealth and, yes, rational minimum wages in the interests of the greater good of the American people. But Harvard students are reluctant to pay higher taxes, because they’re the ones destined for the highest tax brackets. And there’s the rub: The average Harvard student isn’t willing to put his money where his political mouth is. When it comes to money, we’re all George W. Bush.

Apparently, in order to be a bleeding-heart liberal, you have to toss aside one other old-fashioned value: thought. As the sit-in approached its third week, somewhere in Harvard Yard a first-year student handed me a neon-orange leaflet emblazoned with “Living Wage Now!” I asked him why he supported the living wage. He responded with a pre-programmed response that he’d practically memorized from a handout. I asked him about the socioeconomic principles behind the movement. He stammered. I pressed for his opinion. He told me to talk to so-and-so, who would be better able to address my concerns. I asked him how he could so adamantly support a movement he didn’t even understand. Blank stare.

I realized then that I’m not a liberal, and I’m not a conservative. I quit marching to the beat of the Democratic drum, and started listening to the Republican. I don’t march to it, but I accept it. And I’m not embarrassed. I’m not scared to say I don’t support the living wage, yet I still don’t think ROTC should return to campus. I think Harvard should divest from Israel, and I hope that the U.S. wipes out Saddam Hussein. The fact is, I was so embarrassed to be a self-defined liberal during the living wage campaign that I realized I actually wasn’t a liberal. And as support for the campaign wavered, the vast majority of my friends reached similar conclusions.

In the end, Harvard students look to rational, quantifiable reasoning when pressed to evaluate political issues. It took the catastrophic idiocy of the living wage sit-in to jolt Harvard students into looking with evaluative eyes at their political surroundings. For this, if nothing else, I am indebted to the campaign. If it weren’t for the over-the-top chanting, postering, and that silly first-year who hadn’t the slightest clue what he was doing, I may still have been living the Harvard lie of blind liberalism without prudent thought. I had to be convinced that I didn’t believe in what they were doing, and they themselves were the catalyst in helping me see the light. I may not have a core of unadulterated conservatism, but thank God I’ve dropped the fake liberal me that only existed in Harvard’s liberal pressure cooker. Thank God I’ve started thinking.

Thank God for the living wage.

C. Matthew MacInnis ’02, an engineering sciences concentrator in Lowell House, was president of The Crimson in 2001.