I work in Student Center in the maintenance department and I wanted to write a letter in regards to an article I read in the Thursday edition of the Daily Egyptian about National Student Employee Appreciation week.

First, I would like to thank you for putting that story in the paper because I had no prior knowledge about that week and would not have known about it if it weren’t for your article. I wanted to write a letter because I believe the student employees in the maintenance department at the Student Center were shown no forms of appreciation this entire semester let alone last week.

I heard from several other student workers on this campus who said they had been shown appreciation for the work they do and it was a bit upsetting to see that Student Employee Appreciation Week had come and gone without any of us receiving any gratitude.

I thought about going to the proper personnel within my place of employment to discuss this problem but I was worried that would result in us being shown appreciation only because we asked for it. The sad truth is that if our custodial supervisor or the director of operations and maintenance wanted to show us any appreciation, they would have done it without anyone asking them to.

I am not speaking for myself alone. There are approximately 25 student workers who were not shown any gratitude for the work that we do. We have one of the most physically demanding jobs on campus and some display of appreciation would have been nice.

In no way am I intending to speak badly of those who decided not to participate in Student Employee Appreciation Week. I understand appreciation week is over and I am not asking for anything extravagant. All I am saying is the student employees in the maintenance department at the Student Center were upset we had to find out about appreciation week through the newspaper. I thank those at the Daily Egyptian for providing me with a venue for my voice to be heard. If there are any other students who were not shown any appreciation, I hope this letter will encourage you to speak out because we all deserve to be shown some gratitude in one way or another.

Derrick Langston

senior from Blue Island studying radio/television & speech communication