Guest Column | The internship dilemma

What are you doing this summer?

The subject of internships has been on almost every Penn student’s brain for the past few months. Especially for upperclassmen, obtaining a prestigious internship is thought to be an essential stepping stone for landing a fantastic job after graduation or being accepted into a suitable graduate school.

For this reason, students scramble to find a position somewhere (or anywhere) and may be forced to settle for less desirable conditions than they originally expected. Exploiting students in this way seems unfair.

A large percentage of internship programs offer no pay in return for a painstaking number of hours. Often this work involves mostly low-level labor, such as stapling papers and making coffee runs, and provides little educational benefit. On the other hand, unpaid internships sometimes exploit interns as regular employees — using them for high-level, difficult tasks without any compensation.

To make matters worse, interns usually must secure their own housing, provide their own transportation and pay for their own meals on the job. They are seldom reimbursed for their expenses. Because of this, students are actually spending money, and making none, in order to uphold these positions.

The term ‘internship’ has condoned this type of treatment for years.

Students are not the only ones placed in difficult positions, though. Some employers genuinely wish to provide students with an opportunity to spend time in a field but simply lack the funds to pay for their interns’ time. This seems acceptable if they do actually offer a learning opportunity

As an example, I interned for a district attorney’s office last summer. The experience I gained through observing court and doing research was my payment. I did my share of low-level tasks — filing and making phone calls — but was allowed to focus the majority of my energy on court and learning just what it means to be a district attorney.

However, many students are not so fortunate. While they may land an unpaid internship at a big name company that will look great on a resume, they may very possibly gain little to no understanding of the field and walk away without any added knowledge.

Entire summers can be wasted, in which students leave with only another line on a resume and a letter of recommendation advocating superb diligence in filing and scanning checks.

On the contrary, other interns are assigned work that higher-level employees usually handle — such as selling real estate properties or interacting with clients. While this type of internship offers real experience, it is unfair to expect students to accomplish these tasks without compensation.

This forces the question: Why do students tolerate such arrangements? The answer seems to be that they have very little choice in the matter. They must abide by the standard guidelines that internships lead to success in the future. There are few, if any, alternatives to this plan.

Does the solution lie in rejecting unpaid internships?

Some students have stubbornly started to refuse unpaid positions, choosing paid ones instead — even if they are less prestigious. For many, they are against the principle of free labor. For others, making money over the summer is entirely necessary.

However, unpaid internships are still rampant. A limited group of students protesting unpaid positions will not eliminate them. Larger action needs to be taken.

Perhaps this action is imminent. People have finally started to realize the injustices of the internship system. Last Tuesday, a Manhattan federal district court judge ruled that Fox Searchlight Pictures broke New York as well as federal laws by not paying their production interns on the set of “Black Swan,” who essentially served as regular employees.

This ruling helps us to realize that internships are not accomplishing what they were designed to do.

An intern theoretically accepts a position in return for a learning experience, not an opportunity to do menial labor such as licking envelopes for seven hours a day, five days a week.

Additionally, if an intern is entrusted with work a previously trained and experienced employee would be assigned — whether it be simple or challenging tasks — is it not strange that an employee would earn money while the intern would not?

The implications of the Fox Searchlight ruling — and other recent rulings similar to it — could change the entire internship system.

Capable university students deserve more benefits in return for their hard work over the summer. If we recognize and fight the injustices now, the near future for interns may be much brighter.

Jennifer Shulkin is a rising College junior. You can email her at jenshulkin@yahoo.com.

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