Bryn Mawr Students Issue Demands for Administration, Initiate Strike

By Adrian Velonis, Co-Editor-in-Chief

On November 3, six days into the strike for BIPOC justice initiated at Haverford College, Bryn Mawr students have officially issued their own set of demands to the college’s administration. When Haverford students began to strike from courses on October 29, many emailed professors with information regarding the strike in order to garner faculty support, including those at Bryn Mawr. Given the close relationship between the two colleges, word of the strike rapidly spread across the student body, and many Bryn Mawr students immediately committed to striking from both Haverford and Bryn Mawr classes. These new demands—issued by “The Core Bryn Mawr Strike Collective,” in collaboration with student organizations Sisterhood*, BACaSO, Mujeres*, Zami+, and Mawrters for Immigrant Justice—covered many of the same grievances surrounding on-campus racial injustice as Haverford’s, but also touched upon concrete issues specific to Bryn Mawr’s current practices and historical legacy surrounding race. As part of the strike, student leaders have committed to boycotting most on-campus jobs, academic work, athletics, extracurricular activities, course pre-registration for the spring semester, and any other engagements associated with the college or administration.

Strike Background

On October 30, Bryn Mawr President Kimberly Cassidy, Provost Tim Harte, and Dean Jennifer Walters sent an email to all students which stated that the college would “defend and support students’ right to political expression and demonstration of their moral convictions,” and offered NH95 masks to students who wanted to attend protests in Philadelphia in remembrance of Walter Wallace Jr., the 27-year old who was shot by police on October 26. In contrast, the Haverford administration’s previous request of students not to travel into the city for this purpose was what originally served as the impetus for the on-campus protest and march on October 28.

In her email, Cassidy stated that the college would “encourage all to be generous and thoughtful and compassionate, so that people are not penalized for their positions, but are supported for the choices they need to make.” She stated that students facing lost wages from the strike would be compensated for up to 20 hours of work per week, and  also listed a few ongoing and planned actions related to racial justice on campus, such as funding for the Enid Cook ‘31 Center, support for Africana Studies programming, the creation of an Anti-Racism Committee, and similar initiatives, with a full list of such things forthcoming.

On the evening of November 3, just minutes before the Bryn Mawr-specific strike demands were issued, President Cassidy sent an email titled “Equity and Anti-Racism Draft Framework for Action” which contained general principles regarding racial justice that the college intended to address, as well as specific timelines for those items, in light of the strike at Haverford that many Bryn Mawr students had been participating in. Cassidy’s email stated that the principles were still a work in progress, and welcomed suggestions from the student body. She also promised to acknowledge the multiple student, faculty, and staff contributors in the final draft.The principles, along with a summary of actions addressing each one, are listed below:

1. Name racism that exists structurally at Bryn Mawr.
   1. Continuing to implement recommendations of the History Working Groups (e.g.  student “telling history” projects, institutional history website, “People Who Built Bryn Mawr,” memorial project)
   2. Making the Black at Bryn Mawr Tour, as well as a mandatory session on inclusion, identity and belonging, a requirement for first-year students as part of THRIVE
   3. Creating a section of the official Bryn Mawr website that focuses on evolving work regarding antiracism and equity
   4. Revising the process for reporting and addressing incidents of bias within the Bias Response Team
2. Recognize racism as a central underlying condition/organizer in society and at the College that impedes equity.
   1. Requiring departmental education and work on racism, anti-racism, and equity for all faculty and administration.
   2. Discussing with the Provost, deans, and faculty to make understanding racism and white supremacy a requirement of every student’s education beyond THRIVE (either by extending THRIVE, adding required courses, or required participation in events involving special speakers)
3. Dismantle structures that perpetuate and normalize white supremacy. Challenge and transform histories and structures that slow or reverse change, and value work that advances equity.
   1. Intensifying efforts to hire BIPOC faculty, especially for STEM fields, by revising current hiring processes of the Provost and the Committee on Appointments
   2. Reviewing and revising the tenure and promotion process to recognize faculty who are advancing equity and anti-racism, as well as mentoring and supporting BIPOC/FGLI students
   3. Adding a question to course evaluation forms to ask if/how faculty are creating inclusive, accessible classrooms
   4. Establishing a Racial Justice Impact Fund (initial fund of $10,000) to provide fellowships and grants for students, faculty, and staff pursuing anti-racist community engagement, service to organizations, and research 
   5. Supporting the work of campus groups advancing antiracist work, such as CARLA and the Anti-Racism Committee
4. Redress harm of existing structures
   1. Launching a pilot STEM bridge program to advise/mentor students in STEM
   2. Expanding the staffing of the Pensby Center to better support and advise BIPOC students
   3. Building more diverse candidate pools and ensuring equitable practices in interviewing, reviewing, and retaining employees through Human Resources
   4. Using a racial equity lens in the Board of Trustees to identify and appoint trustees, shape committees’ work, and steward the College’s mission
5. Redistribute power and resources
   1. Providing resources through the Dean’s Emergency Fund and continuing to evaluate financial aid packages to address financial pressures for students on financial aid.
   2. Supporting the continued development of the Africana Studies program, and discussing potential development of a major
   3. Doubling Enid Cook Center funding to $10,000 and ensuring an efficient, transparent mechanism for use of this funding.  
   4. Instituting official College support of Black History Month, providing administrative leadership to support Sisterhood in planning events, and establishing a budget of $15,000 for a Black History Month speaker and related events
   5. Engaging in community discussion (with AMO groups) of recognizing the histories of other communities of color
   6. Fundraising to support the professional and personal development of Black students in collaboration with BIPOC alumnae/i

Bryn Mawr Strike Demands

Shortly afterward, the Core Bryn Mawr Strike Collective issued a document to the Bryn Mawr student body and administration with additional demands. The strike’s list of demands—18 as opposed to Haverford’s 12—is similarly extensive as the set issued by Haverford students last week, with each point containing some amount of clarifying information about the context or nature of the demand in question. An abbreviated list of the Bryn Mawr demands is as follows:

1. We demand transparency and intentional student involvement on the progress of the Bi-Co open letter’s demands.
2. We Demand a Bi-Co course on Blackness and white Privilege as part of the college-wide requirements to be implemented in the next academic year (2021-2022).
3. We demand that the school continue to pay the students who are participating in the strike.
4. We demand that Bryn Mawr acknowledge the unseen labor of Black women and Black trans/nonbinary people on campus. Additionally, we demand that all Bi-co Open Letter writers and the Core Bryn Mawr Strike Collective organizers be financially compensated.
5. We demand an implementation of yearly faculty diversity training encompassing cultural competency and the need for social justice in their day to day work.
6. We demand the implementation of a “reparations fund” towards a yearly allocation of funds and resources to Black and Indigenous students in the form of grants for summer programs, affinity groups, multicultural spaces, and individual expenses such as books, online courses, therapy, and any and all financial need beyond the scope of racial justice work.
7. We demand an increase in funding for the Enid Cook Center ‘31 [sic] community funding.
8. We demand the REMOVAL of all names and monuments present on the Bryn Mawr College campus dedicated to individuals who had a history of oppressing past students, faculty, and staff who did not align with the wealthy white feminist agenda.
9. We demand the Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges take an ACTIVE role in Police and Prison Abolition. We want to see a timeline detailing definitive steps towards forming these partnerships and separating from local law enforcement. In addition, the departments must reopen all racial discrimination cases against Campus Safety and take actions accordingly.
10. We demand that administration actively encourages students at Bryn Mawr and Haverford College to utilize transformative justice methods in conflict resolution.
11. We demand that Bryn Mawr follow in the footsteps of our peer institutions and make partnerships with local Black social justice efforts.
12. We demand that the Bi-Co stop its violence against disabled students.
13. We demand that the College stops charging BIPOC international students, and undocumented students whom are considered international students, extra scholarship tax.
14. We demand that winter break  and summer break housing costs for BIPOC international students be reduced to accommodate BIPOC international students.
15. We demand that Bryn Mawr College declares itself as a sanctuary institution.
16. We demand the inclusivity of undocumented students, particularly those without DACA status and work authorizations, on work payment systems.
17. We demand grade protection and the implementation of student suggestions to the Curriculum Committees.
18. We demand that Bryn Mawr College respond to each of the individual above demands in the form of concrete action and change. We will not conclude the strike until our and Haverford students’ demands are met and a statement is issued with a timeline detailing how specific demands will be fulfilled. The school, (remembering that the brunt of this labor should not be on the backs of Black students, staff, and faculty) will employ and properly compensate all students in the fulfillment of these demands.

Strike organizers also continued to express solidarity with Haverford students. “We will not conclude the strike until our and Haverford students’ demands are met,” they said. A sit-in at Old Library green is scheduled to occur on Friday, November 6 at 9 PM, with remote students given the option to attend via Zoom.

With these new demands, the strikes at Bryn Mawr and Haverford are now formally separate, with each movement addressing the way in which each school has uniquely disenfranchised BIPOC students. However, the nature of the Bi-Co means that the two strikes remain intimately connected. The strikes, though distinct, remain united in their goal for BIPOC justice.

Image credit: Isabel Oalican