I write to the Stanford community in order to shed light upon the grave injustice facing our student hashers (dishwashers) on campus.

The student-managed eating clubs have a long history of employing and exploiting Stanford students as hashers. Between 20 and 30 students rely upon the meager wages from hashing to help pay for an upper-echelon Stanford education. The hashers work in the steamy kitchens giving up many of the traditional college activities to ensure that the rest of the pampered bourgeois student body can receive their meals with little interruption from their studies.

As an eating associate in one of the eating clubs, I watch as these students toil and labor to clean our refuse. I have the luxury of enjoying an after-dinner conversation or running off to study without thinking twice about who will clean up after me. Hashers sacrifice their academics, athletics and social pursuits to scrape up a few more dollars.

We the students, who receive the benefits of the hashers’ hard work day in and day out, have a responsibility to pressure management to pay hashers more fairly. In addition, management refuses to invite hashers to any Suites functions, further exploiting them and treating them inferior to many manual laborers.

Please support the Suites eating club hashers in their efforts for better wages and proper benefits. The student hashers are not making unreasonable requests, but pleading with the management to treat them with the highest level of respect that all Stanford students and community members deserve.

We owe our fellow students the privilege of an educational environment that bestows the esteem and integrity in which Jane and Leland Stanford founded this great institution we call Stanford University.

Andrew Peterman is a master’s student in civil and environmental engineering. He can be reached at apeterman@stanford.edu.