Opinion: Campus Ambassador or Campus Salesman?

Two months ago, I left my job at the UWM Office of Undergraduate Admissions (OUA), and I would like to share my experience. During my time working at OUA, there were a number of regular occurrences that truly appalled me and showed some grave signs regarding the future of the school.

My title was a UWM campus ambassador (CA). The job includes duties, such as writing postcards to prospective students after they visit, entering online data, greeting people and answering the phone at the front desk. The most important duty of a CA, however, is giving prospective students tours of campus. Despite the multitude of tasks and responsibilities that CAs do, the pay is only around $8 per hour. There were attempts to communicate with superiors a pay increase. Those attempts during my time there went mostly unanswered. 

However, the main thing that concerned me was the customer service aspect of the job. Customer service is an expected part of the job, however, it’s a slippery slope and has gone too far.

For example, in early August, a man from the School of Engineering walked into the back office where lead CAs were working and spoke about how enrollment for the School of Engineering had been declining in recent years. He was coming in to request that we try to recruit for them more. While I agree the this was a valid concern, the way he communicated it to the leads was beyond appropriate. 

He leaned over them, stated his point over and over, body trembling nervously and making aggressive looking hand motions. After he had left, the leads stated they felt very unsettled and uncomfortable during the interaction. While most of the staff who were present during this felt uncomfortable, nobody did anything, because we wanted to maintain good customer service, as we were instructed to do. 

Other examples include dealing with rude parents as well as adding too many people on our tours even when they were already too full. Families come in without having scheduled a tour. The office has them fill out a “walk-in” slip. Tour guides become overwhelmed with the number of people in their tour groups, taking groups twice the size that they were expecting.

Further, during my time, a prospective student’s mother asked me how she could make sure her daughter graduated within four years. I calmly spoke up and tried to explain that going to school a bit longer than usual wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, that taking fewer classes per semester or going part-time could help a student focus on their classes better. It could also allow them to work a job while going to school and help build a resume, while also helping them earn money and possibly get a head start on paying their loans off. 

While there seemed to be a sense of understanding in the room that day, and no animosity to speak of, my boss pulled me aside the following day and asked that I not “argue” with guests.

Additionally, the office has extremely poor communication with the rest of campus. Because of this, many tours are off schedule.

In my experience, CAs are easily prone to trouble and write-ups as well. One example I witnessed was a CA who told a joke on the first day of fall training, and had his contract promptly terminated the morning after. Another incident occurred last January, when a female CA was written up for a picture she posted online. They said it was an “inappropriate way to represent the university.” This photo was posted on the employee’s private Instagram account.

The most ridiculous thing, however, was yet to happen.

One Monday, my boss called me into his office to discuss an email from a parent that had come in regarding a tour that he had taken the previous Friday. The email claimed to say that during the tour I seemed “more concerned with creating a future performing arts career than with giving decent tour,” and “[I] didn’t state facts that didn’t align with what he had assumed about the campus”. He said that UWM was at near the top of his daughter’s list of prospective schools, but that had changed after the tour

The parent also thought the fun bit in the tour where we would count all of the coffee shops on campus was a waste of time, but it was something all the other CAs often did.

I did add a fair amount of jokes to the script during the tour, which is expected of the CAs. It’s a very long walk across campus, and we try to find ways to lighten the mood, especially during the harsh summer heat.

The joke that seemed to be the nail in the coffin, however, was the lighthearted joke about the Honors College. When talking about the Honor’s College I mentioned that professors often take their students on excursions and that next summer a professor planned to take a group to a pub in Scotland. I ended the segment by winking and saying, “Quality education, right?” Most of the time, the parents would chuckle at it. 

In this case, the man’s daughter was an Honors student. He claimed that I “made it seem like the Honors college was nothing particularly important. Nothing to be proud of.”

When I heard about the email, it upset and confused me. Two months earlier, one of the leads had supervised one of my tours as part of staff evaluations. Other than some outdated information and vocal projection tips, he said everything was going great. I gave that same tour the entire summer. Smooth sailing.

Because of the email, my boss decided to tag along for the tour that day, and I had no problem with it. I gave him, word-for-word, my usual tour, the exact tour I had given the lead.

Afterwards, my boss did give me some tips. Tips such as slowing down during certain segments, not repeating certain words too much and try not to mention tuition and other costs compared to other schools and that I should leave that to the experts. He found few problems with my tour.

The father who had emailed the complaint about my tour seemed like it was just a guy who misinterpreted the tour. That was that.

I was written up for the email anyway. 

What concerns me about this is that instead of giving prospective students an authentic interpretation of our experience at UWM, which is what is stated in our job description, we were being asked to water it down into something that will please everyone. The word ambassador is defined as a person who acts a representative or promoter of a place or activity. I will tell you firsthand, that is not what I did as a UWM campus ambassador. I wasn’t there to inform; I was there to please. 

We treat education as a business. The parents and potential students are being treated as paying customers at store. Because of this, CAs are bending over backwards to make sure that people’s experiences are everything they had imagined. Therefore, we are not in any way ambassadors, we are salesmen. 

From my experience, there have been negative consequences regarding these conditions. At least six people from my semester-long training class quit before they started, not to mention the number of working CAs that have left. We started the summer with four lead CAs, but since July two have left. The office, since it is now so understaffed, now hires CAs without any training process at all.

I’m not looking to start a riot. I want to try and spread this message. I don’t mean this letter as anything negative about the school itself. I love this university, and I don’t discourage anyone from wanting to attend it. Our architecture and nursing programs are cutting edge and our film school is one of the best in the country. What I am saying is that students who are interested should probably seek other means of learning about it. 

Disclaimer: The story above doesn’t reflect the opinion of the UWM Post, the university or its student body as a whole. It is an expression of opinion of an individual and should be interpreted as such.