Tracing a student job ‘bait & $witch’

You don’t need a college degree to smell a bait-andswitch.

Students at SUNY’s Stony Brook University applied for what they thought were paid positions with the state Department of Health as coronavirus contact tracers — only to be told after the fact that the gigs are uncompensated.

“The New York State Department of Health is hiring for paid, remote job roles,” read an e-mail to science majors at the school earlier this month. “All opportunities listed were created to help in the fight against COVID-19.”

Among the listed positions was contact tracer, the crack detectives the state is now recruiting to track down previously unidentified coronavirus cases by retracing the steps of known patients.

In fact, Gov. Cuomo places so much stock in contact tracing that a sufficient number of tracers is one of the seven criteria a region must meet to be approved for reopening.

In general, the state is paying contact tracers $27 per hour, the DOH has previously said.

But the labor evidently isn’t so valuable that it’s worth paying college kids for it; Stony Brook students who applied received an automated e-mail reply indicating the positions are actually unpaid.

Stony Brook officials responded to a request for comment with a statement that did not directly address the discrepancy.

SUNYofficialsdidnotimmediatelyrespondtoaninquiryas towhetherthediscrepancywas limitedtoStonyBrook,orifstudents systemwide were being askedtoworkforfree.

DOH said the state is not “recruiting volunteers” but that SUNY has an internship program that allows students to get credit for the work.