Fraternities monopolize ASA jobs

In Hendrie Hall, past the Snapple machine, down some stairs, through a dark hallway, and to the right, lies a widely used, but little understood organization: Associated Student Agencies (ASA). Here, members of specific fraternities and athletic teams maintain exclusive control over more than half of the agencies.

REBECCA ROSENTHAL/YH Hendrie Hall, located at 165 Elm St., houses the Associated Student Agency.

ASA, founded in the early 1930s, is an organization of student businesses run by and for Yale students. One agency operates the laundry service, another rents out refrigerators, one delivers birthday cakes, and seven other student-run businesses offer a variety of other services to the student body. Even though Yale administrators oversee the agencies as a whole, the management of each agency is ultimately left to individual students. Indeed, the organization's mission statement specifies that ASA's first mission is "to provide management training experience for Yale students."

WHILE SOME AGENCIES APPEAR NOT TO BE affiliated with any specific group or organization, more than half the agencies are controlled by certain fraternities and sports teams which pass on managerial jobs to other members of their particular constituency.

Emily Fain, DC '02, senior manager of the ring agency, is a member of the swim team. "The managing jobs are pretty much handed down through the team," she explained. "This happens because we're running our own business—we are allowed to determine our own hiring practices. A lot of my friends are swimmers and I want to hire someone I can rely on."

While conceding that teammates may be given preference in employment, Fain is "sure that if someone who wasn't on the swim team approached one of the managers and said that he or she wanted to work for the agency, that would be fine."

One fraternity member, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, works for an agency run almost entirely by members of his fraternity. He said simply, "We like to keep things in the family."

Another fraternity member who works for a different agency also insisted on anonymity. "In the ASA, like in secret societies, the tradition is passed down," he said. "One guy grabs the position and hands it down so that people can continue with associations. While it's not directly a frat thing, someone is just more likely to choose someone in a frat to succeed him."

WHILE IT MAY seem unfair that one must be a member of an exclusive organization in order to obtain one of these lucrative jobs, it remains unclear whether this form of job discrimination is explicitly against ASA policy.

Diane Healey, the director of ASA, refused interviews on four separate occasions in the past week. Healey did, however, refer the Herald to the ASA's operation manual, which explicitly states that student agency managers have the "responsibility of interviewing prospective candidates for student worker positions and will adhere to the employment practices of the University with respect to non-discriminatory practices."

Hiring practices vary from agency to agency and do not all rely on tightly-kint groups as a primary source of employee recruitment. Swimmer Atticus Leblanc, BR '02, is a senior manager of the Distribution Agency, which distributes advertisements to student mailboxes, residential colleges, and dining halls. "The guy who had my job last year was not a swimmer," Leblanc noted. "I wouldn't consider the passing down of managerial jobs as a cronyism thing."

Nevertheless, one fraternity member told the Herald that it is essentially impossible to secure a job in the agency unless you are part of a certain fraternity.

BETTY TRACHTENBERG, DEAN OF STUDENT AFFAIRS and a member of the ASA advisory board, is aware of potential problems with the ASA's employment practices. "The managers do their own hiring, but they should be giving the jobs to the best qualified people instead of to their friends," Trachtenberg said.

Braxton McKee, JE '02, co-manager of the Necessities Agency, justified his agency's employment practice. "It's not worth it for us to have a [really] time-consuming hiring process," he said. "These are student-run agencies where people are hiring out of their peer-groups. I chose a person that I know, who I think is the most responsible person for the job."

To be sure, when Yale graduates embark on a job search, family, friends and other connections play a significant role in landing highly competitive jobs. But does ASA accurately model the outside world, either in purpose or in practice?

Ernst Huff, associate vice president of student financial and administrative services, said that the ASA "is a Yale-sanctioned organization that allows students to get practical experience—but these ASA jobs are not student employment jobs per se" and are thus not directly regulated and administered by the University.

ASA AGENCIES ARE ALLOWED TO USE THE YALE
name in their materials and are allowed to use the University's physical resources: storage space, tables, chairs, and computers. Agencies also have access to Yale's carefully guarded student address lists and are the only student businesses allowed to operate on campus.

Despite ASA's close ties to the University, the organization indeed operates similarly to a private business. The ASA "does not receive a direct allocation of monies from the University," the operations manual states. "In effect, student agencies are self-supporting and self-sufficient." Each member agency must give one-third of its profits to the ASA to cover operation costs. Students, however, are the ones who actually develop the businesses and are responsible for "the successful and profitable operation of their agency."

While some agency jobs seem available to the public, others clearly are not. Is Yale, in some way, sponsoring a system of fraternal patronage? Trachtenberg said, "There may be a general problem within the guidelines in how people are hired. This is a question for the advisory board."

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