I keep a student’s feet raw to save $14, and I call that responsible management. Eli, a little dish hand in the Warden dining hall I own, walks 6 miles home after closing because I stopped paying for the late shuttle. You bought the sandwich he washed from your tuition and your taxes; I kept the shuttle money. James Freeman’s “Trump vs. Big Oil” sets President Trump against the oil companies, which is a perfectly respectable way to describe a fight over who gets to name the cost. I prefer to show you where the cost goes.
By the second week, Eli’s heels split open. He wrapped them in paper towels from the dish station because the clinic wanted a co-pay and I don’t pay co-pays for bodies that can still stand. The towels softened the blood enough for him to finish the shift. That’s the part I want you to learn: his feet were damaged, and my gain was $14. Not $14 per hour. $14 for the whole evening. The arithmetic is clean. His feet lost. I kept the money. God blesses a disciplined margin.
I call Eli a throughput assistant in the dining reports. The phrase is useful because “a 19-year-old with open skin walking home in the dark” makes the faculty uncomfortable, and discomfort is the beginning of bargaining. A throughput assistant is easier to schedule. A boy is harder. I’m telling you this for your own good.
He asked once whether the shuttle might return during finals. I explained that the final bus had been eliminated as part of our Mobility Efficiency Initiative. That’s what the committee approved. I wrote the initiative. The honest version is that I made him walk so I could retain $14. I prefer the committee version because it lets everyone discuss transportation equity without having to picture Eli taking off his socks.
He didn’t miss a shift. His heels thickened around the cracks. The body adapts when the alternative is rent. That’s not resilience, by the way. It’s a trapped person continuing to appear available.
The student-affairs office issued a statement about belonging. The business school held a panel on ethical leadership. I attended both. The panel cost $8,000, and the coffee was excellent. Eli’s shuttle would have cost $14 a night for 20 nights. We rejected it after a 12-minute review.
You see the faculty now. I’m not an eccentric dean with an unpleasant hobby. I teach the arithmetic, certify it, and send it into the world with a transcript. My graduates become provosts, consultants, hospital administrators, energy advisers, and people who write the cost assumptions beneath public policy. They learn that a person’s injury is a variable expense, that a benefit is an inefficiency if the worker cannot demand it, and that the correct response to a complaint is a committee whose recommendation arrives after the body has adjusted.
The university is proud of its ethics curriculum. It should be. The curriculum teaches students to identify exploitation in historical cases, then gives them a spreadsheet in which exploitation becomes a labor-market outcome. Eli supplies the final examination. His feet are the case study. The $14 is the answer key.
“If any would not work, neither should he eat.”
— 2 Thessalonians 3:10
I’ve assigned that verse for years. The students underline “work” and pass over “eat,” which is good training. Hunger is a management instrument. So is distance. So is a clinic with a fee. Each one narrows the worker’s choices until obedience looks voluntary and the institution can congratulate itself on respecting choice.
The university has now eliminated the shuttle, reduced the dining stipend, and raised the meal price that Eli serves. I’ve cut the wages that bought the food he prepares. The quarterly enrollment figure is strong. I haven’t traced where the students’ demand goes when they stop eating on campus.
Eli still comes in at 4:30. He tapes his heels before the shift. The tape costs him nothing because he takes it from my supply cabinet, and I’ve decided that’s an acceptable benefit. You’ll be pleased to know the system is sustainable. There’s always another student who needs the job.
The faculty remains. The lesson remains. Eli’s feet will close eventually, or someone else’s will open in their place. And I’ll continue teaching you that a university can call itself humane, provided the body paying for the education stays outside the balance sheet.
Sterling A. Varice holds the Hayek-Friedman Chair and serves as Dean of Instruction at Warden University’s College of Business and Economics in Richmond, Virginia. He is the author of three textbooks: Divine Mandates for Labor Utilization, Social Obligations for Profit Maximization, and Calibrated Deprivation: A Manager’s Guide to Employee Motivation.