Boston's Alternative Source! image!
   
Feedback

[This Just In]

HARVARD HUBBUB
The wages of sit-in

BY KRISTEN LOMBARDI

As the Phoenix goes to press, 46 students at Harvard University are still occupying a school building after President Neil Rudenstine refused their demand that all Harvard employees earn a minimum wage of $10.25 per hour and receive health benefits. In staging the aggressive protest, students have borrowed a page from the campus radicalism of past eras — the last time a sit-in occurred at Harvard was during the oil crisis of the 1970s.

Aside from earning a place in the annals of Harvard history, however, it’s unclear just how effective the student protest has been. Seven days have passed since the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) coalition first stormed the administrative offices at Massachusetts Hall, where Rudenstine and other top administrators run the university’s day-to-day business. That’s seven days without bathing, decent sleep, and contact with the sun, save for students poking their heads out of cracked windows.

That’s also seven days without any response from the administration. Rudenstine and other officials have refused to speak with students, let alone agree to implement a living-wage policy for the nearly 1500 Harvard workers who make less than $10 per hour — including janitors, food servers, and security guards. And officials appear ready to hold out even longer. In an April 23 statement, Rudenstine suggested the administration wasn’t about to budge unless students did first. “We are prepared to continue to exchange views [with PSLM members],” he wrote, “but in appropriate settings, once an environment of genuinely free discussion has been restored.”

Then again, Rudenstine remains one of the few people not willing to listen to students, who remain locked in the building and say they won’t leave until the administration meets their demand. By Tuesday morning, the picket line outside Massachusetts Hall had doubled in size, with close to 50 students, faculty members, and their supporters hoisting signs that read i support a harvard living wage, no $ no peace, and harvard pays poverty wages. More than 70 of their colleagues had pitched tents nearby in Harvard Yard, where streamers of leaflets decorated trees. And one prominent figure after another — Massachusetts senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, State Representative Jarrett Barrios, Democratic National Committee chair Terry McAuliffe, AFL-CIO president John McSweeney, and the entire Cambridge City Council — has voiced support for the effort. As one student puts it, “every politician and his mother” has stopped by Harvard to lend a hand — or a plate of food. (Barrios, Cambridge city councilor Marjorie Decker, and the Middle East Restaurant each shipped vans full of food to the protesters.)

Eventually, students say, such mounting public pressure will force Rudenstine and other officials to reach out. “Every day, more and more people are calling and emailing the administration,” says student organizer Emilou MacLean. “I don’t see how administrators can keep ignoring us.”

University officials, however, continue to insist that Harvard already pays its employees fairly and offers good benefits. After a university committee studied the living-wage issue for some 13 months last year, Harvard launched programs meant to boost worker skills, as well as expand benefits like health care. University spokesperson Joe Wrinn says those decisions are final. “Lots of voices have already weighed in on this issue,” he explains. “Our policy is decided. We fundamentally believe the best way to raise people out of poor-paying jobs is through education,” as opposed to a wage floor.

Student activists, meanwhile, seem equally set in their position. After all, paying workers $10.25 per hour — the same figure mandated by the City of Cambridge’s 1999 living-wage ordinance — is far from extravagant. Students estimate that it would cost Harvard $10 million per year to boost the wages of workers currently making as little as $6.50 per hour. That may seem like a lot of money. But students note that $10 million equals just one-half of one percent of the annual interest that Harvard earns on its $19 billion endowment.

“We’re not just stuck on our demand,” says Aaron Bartley, a law-school student who remains inside the building. “Our proposal offers the real possibility of improving the overall [Harvard] community.”

He concludes, “It’s a simple issue. The administration has no excuse not to pay a living wage. From that, we aren’t backing down.”

For now, then, there’s only one thing on which students and administrators agree: expect the Harvard sit-in to last indefinitely.

Issue Date: April 26 - May 3, 2001