On February 22, students from Bryn Mawr College poured into Dalton 300 to learn about the 2020 Bryn Mawr Strike. Organized by the Self Governance Association (SGA) in partnership with the Coalition for Anti-Racist Literacy (CARLA), the teach-in offered a historical breakdown of the Strike, as well as a panel of students and professors. Faculty, staff and alumni were present in-person as well as over Zoom.
The room was packed full without an open seat in sight, as students eagerly sought to learn about the 2020 Strike that has come to shape much of campus life. Some dorms’ Community Diversity Assistants even encouraged students to go by offering meals after the presentation.
The event was hosted by Joi Dallas, who was working at Bryn Mawr in residential life during 2020 and was present for many meetings during the Strike. Dallas became a full-time advisor to the Enid Cook Center and AMOs as a result of the demands. She said to the room, “These graduating seniors were the last ones present to experience what that heightened presence of activism felt like…We think it’s really important that first years understand what happened so they can take that into their own activism.”
SGA’S Overview
SGA Archivists Keyla Benitez ‘24, Jasmin Marshall ‘26 and Julia V. Rieger ‘26 introduced the facts of the Strike, providing attendees with an overview of student experiences from October 29 – November 19, 2020, after the murder of Walter Wallace Jr.
“[The Strike] did change how I see the institution,” said Keyla Benitez, Institutional Memory Committee Head and Teach-In Coordinator.
She spoke about the intensity of documenting the Strike, even using materials from her personal archive she had collected during those weeks. The first demands were released on November 3, and by November 9 the first teach-in was held. Over the course of the 16-day Strike, 30 teach-ins were held. The impact of these teach-ins was critical, so much so that the college now pays students to develop and present teach-ins “that contribute to building an understanding of structural racism and learning about practices that advance equity and inclusion.”
Benitez thanked the Strike organizers for how much the college had changed in four years, and encouraged students to “keep that going, y’all.”
Marshall, who is an archivist for SGA’s Alliance of Multicultural Organizations Institutional Memory Committee, is a sophomore. They spoke about some of the institutional programs that had been established after the Strike, including the Equity, Inclusion & Anti-Racism Teach-Ins, CARLA and Who Built Bryn Mawr. They also emphasized student-led activist collectives on Bryn Mawr’s campus, including the Black Student Liberatory Coalition, which started during the Strike and continues to do work today. Marshall went on to describe the Black at Bryn Mawr tours, which were established in 2015 and now function through the Impact Center, and for which they are now a tour guide.
Rieger, who helps manage the SGA website, described the digital archival work presently on the site. These research projects include the Student Made-Archives and Bryn Mawr History: The Silencing of BIPOC Voices.
Keyla concluded the historical review by sharing a portion of the letter drafted by the Collective after the Strike concluded, titled “On Normalcy”
‘Bryn Mawr College cannot function without the time, labor, and commitment that we (students) invest in the institution. Bryn Mawr College cannot function without the time, commitment, and exploited labor of its first-generation low-income students. Most importantly, Bryn Mawr College cannot function without the time, commitment, and exploited labor of its Black, Indigenous, and other students of color who are not only marginalized because of their gender and racial identification, but may also be marginalized because of their class status, migration status, sexuality, (dis)abilities, and other identifications that continue to marginalize groups of people in the oppressive white-anglo saxon protestant society of the “United” States.’
Bryn Mawr Strike Collective, “On Normalcy”
CARLA
Dallas held a “pop quiz” about the outcomes of the Strike demands. She outlined numerous Strike Demands and their results, which highlighted the complexities of meeting the demands of the Stike Collective. She referred to certain actions occurring “in the spirit of the Strike,” but not being directly in line with the demands.
“Just because a demand wasn’t met, doesn’t mean that something important didn’t happen,” Dallas commented.
One demand that was directly met was the removal of controversial Bryn Mawr President M. Carey Thomas from Old Library. Dallas said, “If you’re a first year you may not understand how big of a deal that was.”
Panelists
Three panelists spoke to the room about their experiences being on campus, online and on faculty during the strike: History Department Chair and Who Built Bryn Mawr advisor Ignacio Gallup-Díaz, Coumba Dianka ‘24 and Kira Elliott ‘24.
Coumba Dianka
Dianka is a senior from Philadelphia, who explained that coming to Bryn Mawr was her first time being at a predominantly white institution. She spent most of her first year during the Strike experiencing severe “wariness” of who she could interact with on campus, “besides the strong community of upperclassmen,” who took her in during the organizing because they were working to “create spaces for newcomers to learn about what was going on and be part of it.”
In that spirit, she explained, “It’s important to keep the memory going and inform as many people as I can before I graduate.”
“Black and Brown students on campus are what keeps Bryn Mawr going,” Dianka stated. The students who were organizing during the strike were “students who had a lot to lose,” but who still chose to “be involved, even if it did come at a risk.”
When asked what students or community members who were not on campus during the strike took away from the teach-in, each member had a different perspective.
Dianka shared, “If you hear something, say something. …We’re coming onto this campus still trying to figure out how the world works, but try not to be ignorant. Be a part of it.”
Kira Elliott
Elliott has spent time at Bryn Mawr conducting research design projects about the Strike, after she was a fully remote student during her first semester at Bryn Mawr due to the pandemic. She explained that the Strike actually “really allowed me to feel the most connected to the community at Bryn Mawr.” She was able to attend teach-ins online or on Instagram lives, which helped her to feel rooted in the movement.
“Being part of something through refusal” was important, and the organizers were very creative in how they helped students maneuver through missing classes. She spoke about students attending but not participating in class, and having the Strike logo behind them. “A lot of faculty had a really hard time either firmly putting their support behind the Strike, or navigating how the Strike would impact their careers.”
“When there is an effort to make change, there is going to be tension, there is going to be conflict. I think that’s important … The Strike is a state of mind, it’s a way of being …Student activism is ongoing, it’s happening right now,” Elliott said, wearing a keffiyeh.
Professor Ignacio Gallup-Díaz
Professor Gallup-Díaz has been at Bryn Mawr since 1999 and witnessed many of the changes over the years, but he explained that his personal background made him feel directly connected to the students who were striking. “I grew up as a poor working class person … I don’t cross picket lines … Academia is an attenuated space, because sad to say, academics don’t think of ourselves as ‘working people’.” He also lives in West Philadelphia, where Wallace Jr. was shot. Gallup-Díaz said, “That’s my neighborhood! That person is my neighbor. It’s not theoretical to me, and also, it shouldn’t be presented as such to our students.”
Because of his solidarity, he was invited to Strike negotiation meetings by students “to be a witness.” He said that when admin asks about how to approach the Strike, he says, “We should be grateful that their reaction is a strike and a list of demands. The reaction isn’t always going to be so constructive. It doesn’t have to be. Students are angry.”
Looking at the events from the perspective of a historian, Gallup-Díaz said, “All the things that came together …It was an amazing moment … Students have a four-year window to enact change but also to connect it to wider or longer initiatives.”
“It was a moment in US history, which the country is still dealing with and the College is still dealing with,” he said. There was a “national sense that ‘things need to change.’ A moment of revulsion and regret. It’s [about] white supremacy, let’s use the term.”
Professor Dr. Frank Moten gave prestigious Flexner lectures on campus and interacted with Strikers during 2020, which Gallup-Díaz said was also a pivotal influence. Moten is “a leading scholar in the fields of Black studies and critical theory,” who has extensively “written about the plight of Black students,” said Gallup-Díaz. Moten was the “perfect person to have on campus at that time … He advised them, and I know he provided solidarity to them, again, as a person of color who has been in these institutions.”
“[2020] was kind of like an earthquake, and the shocks and aftershocks are still in play,” Dr. Ignacio Gallup-Díaz concluded.
As the last class to experience the Strike graduates, President Kim Cassidy prepares to step down and the former Dean of the Undergraduate College Jennifer Walter has made her exit, the work to preserve institutional memory remains even more critical.
