Eastern’s current Student Employee Regulations enforce a punishment in response to minor rule violations.

Student employees are limited to 42 hours in a two-week pay period. This is a reasonable regulation, ensuring that all jobs will be part-time only and giving other employees a chance to get a good number of hours in the workplace.

This still applies if a student has multiple jobs through campus employment. Since the student is still being paid by a single entity, the different kinds of work still qualify legally as one job.

Currently, Student Employment Regulations require student workers to keep track of and balance those hours by themselves, stating:

“If excess hours are worked per pay period without permission, the student’s job(s) will be terminated without warning.”

The regulations do not seem harsh on paper, but this punishment still applies for going over the hour limit by as little as half an hour.

If the student wants their job back, they have to wait for two weeks before going through the entire hiring process again, which forces other student employees to try to cover their hours when they, too, have to worry about the hour limit.

Removing the hour limit altogether is out of the question, but we at The Daily Eastern News believe the punishment is a bit too harsh.

A warning after the first mistake could save a lot of headache for employees and supervisors. If a student was excessively over the allowed hours, immediate termination might make sense, but one or two hours of extra work should not be basis for firing an employee.