As new students got to campus a week before class, they started to receive work-study assignments. Around 30 of them were surprised to see “Construction Management and Oversight,” a new position in the 2025–26 school year, in their Workday employment information. The idea that Carleton College would give its first year students work-study assignments requiring manual labor in active construction sites may be disturbing to readers, but the truth of what they are doing is worse. In actuality, these 30 students have the weight of the college on their shoulders each day due to their one responsibility: supervising the drying of paint in ongoing Carleton construction projects. That’s right: when the construction company renovating campus projects successfully paints a wall, whichever poor student employee is on-duty must drop everything and rush to the scene to see it dry. Whether they’re assigned to the religious interest houses, Davis basement or even the nefarious Parish, each of these students feels the same crushing pressure of the knowledge that their work every day is essential to the college’s survival. 

Now that we’re a few weeks into term, the Carletonian has partnered with SHAC’s first-year-paint-watchers support group to check in with these students and see how it’s going for them. Our first interviewee, Bore D. O’This ’29 described the work as “challenging and complex,” and mentioned that the training was particularly intense. O’This said, “you know when people make those tiktoks about ‘rawdogging’ flights with no music and no book and everything? It was kind of like that. We got to campus, and each started with a small 1 by 3 feet of painted wall, which we had to watch until dry. They get upset if we touch it to check before it’s dry, but you don’t get paid for watching dried paint, so you really have to watch it just the perfect amount. Anyway, we each had our square during training, and we were in small isolated chambers just watching it dry.” 

Another student, Getme Owt ‘29, mentioned similar experiences and described each shift as a “harrowing mind game – you have to keep track of how much time has passed, but you don’t want to be seen checking your phone too much. We’re very closely supervised. I like to search for letters in the popcorn textured walls and ceilings of Parish when I’m there, or in the old SHAC. The floor rugs have really great words hidden in them. I’m going to know all the secrets of this place by the time I graduate.” After some hesitation, Owt began to describe an incident from last week that has since become a hot topic on YikYak. They said, “while I do know who did it, I will not reveal their identity. I don’t think it was their fault, since our boss did originally text that someone needed to watch the East facing wall of Douglas House’s living room, and the student employee just never saw the correction message. But really, we’ve been here for three weeks, they should be able to see when a wall is wet. Anyway, I guess since they thought it was wet and it wasn’t changing, they just stayed there until the next day when the construction workers came back. Awkward.” 

The supervisors of the wet paint watching team declined to comment, but in their email, they mentioned assessing interest for future dining hall workers specializing in sneakily watching pots so that they don’t know they’re being watched and still boil. Then we know when they actually boil. Overall, we hope that SHAC’s support group is able to relieve some of the immense pressure on this group of first years who have been entrusted with safeguarding the future of our college. We urge the college to seriously consider the mental health ramifications of assigning work-studies such as these in the future.