They don't want to be treated like secretaries, with all the negative connotations that word carries. In my experience in the private sector and in higher education, people who perform secretarial, clerical, or administrative-assistant work get more respect in the corporate world. But in many department offices on campus, secretaries are treated as someone to tolerate, appease, or badger. Faculty members and students alike seem to believe that they could do the job, although they have chosen not to. The janitors, computer techies, clerical-staff members, cashiers, gardeners, and everyone else you might meet in the course of a working day at a university are all participants in the making of a successful institution.
None is more or less valuable.
Faculty members are needed to teach, but the person who will unclog their toilets is needed, too. It's a joint effort. Yet one of the most valuable resources a university can have, its staff, is often overlooked, unrecognized, and undervalued. They are somewhere in between, providing the resources needed to hold the race at all. Much discussion occurs these days about how to strengthen higher education's sense of purpose.