Students who live in Broadway hand their student IDs to the same security guards every day, but few know the conditions of guards’ employment. The security guards stationed in off-campus dorms are employed by Summit Security, which has signed an independent contract with Columbia. Currently, its employees are in the process of unionizing—in January, they will be organized under the auspices of the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ. When I asked a security guard in the Broadway dorm to describe her employment benefits, she shrugged her shoulders: “Zero.
