I spend a lot of time in ugly Lauinger Library attempting to study.

It’s there, at a scratched and sticky wooden desk, that I have encountered the pain and joy of the working poor.

It’s there that I make pathetic attempts at speaking Spanish to the janitorial staff and learn that Sonia can’t buy medicine for her son and that Maria’s boss told her to clean out a blocked toilet with her bare hands (all names have been changed).

It’s there I realize that we at Georgetown celebrate the resilience of the poor and simultaneously perpetuate their suffering.

As Catholics and Christians we derive our identity from the way we treat the poor. Our sense of self is contingent upon both our individual actions and institutional policies. As Hoyas, we identify with this campus, yet pay poverty wages to the people who enable it to operate.

Our current university policy evades our responsibility to pay a living wage of $14.93 per hour to all workers on campus. As intellectuals of faith, we must continue to question ourselves and the structures which surround us in an effort to change Sonia and Maria’s lives.

The employees here question these structures themselves. As I snooze over my computer on the second floor of Lauinger and down over-priced coffee, they ask me why Georgetown does not pay them enough to live with dignity.

They have been asking me why since freshman year, two and a half years ago. I used to tell them that Georgetown cares about them and is working to pay them enough to live comfortably and work one full time job.

But I have stopped telling them that Georgetown cares about them because they don’t believe it anymore. And frankly, neither do I.

Salaries for Georgetown’s top administrators continue to rise while wages for those at the bottom remain close to stagnant. Institutionally, we move slowly if at all.

If we do care about workers we should prove it by publicly committing to a living wage policy now. We should respond by adopting a fair labor policy that includes the following: an annually indexed living wage for all workers in the Georgetown community, wage parity for all workers regardless of their parent company, access to resources such as child care, health care and use of the library and gym, working conditions free from harassment, job security and the right to organize.

Our response determines whether or not we are who we say we are. Last year Georgetown took a step in the right direction by forming the Advisory Committee on Business Practices to create a just labor policy. This year we took another step in the right direction by raising wages to a minimum of $8.50 per hour for Georgetown’s contracted workers.

But the rhetoric from this committee still seems to be that we must first examine the budget to see when or even if Georgetown can afford to pay workers a living wage. Some members say that after shuffling some numbers over a period of months we may possibly make a plan to implement some kind of gradual increase at some point in the future.

The Advisory Committee on Business Practices must commit now to a living wage policy, then adjust the budget to reflect this commitment. This isn’t about charity after we pay our other bills. It’s about fulfilling our covenant to care for the most vulnerable among us.

We must afford a living wage now because we simply cannot afford to be a place which imposes pain on members of our community. This isn’t only about what’s best for the workers. It’s about what’s best for Georgetown.

Georgetown is and always will be a place of contradictions. Some are natural and inevitable.

We’re a place where students trip over a crushed Keystone Light cans on Saturday morning, then gaze up at the cross atop Healy tower. We’re a place where ideologies collide and new ideas are born from seething contradictions.

Other contradictions become hypocrisy. We’re a place where our labor policy contradicts our rhetoric of preferentially opting to help the poor and preserve our identity as a people of justice. We’re a place where workers break my heart with their stories, and I have no answer to their questions.

These contradictions are preventable, and they can and should be changed. Georgetown must commit to a comprehensive living wage policy now.

My Georgetown’s better than this.

Megan Murphy is a junior in the College and a member of the Georgetown Solidarity Committee.