In preparation for the walk-out led by Haverford’s Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), the group hosted a public meeting to discuss, amend, and vote on the demands to be presented during the event.
The meeting took place in Gest 101 at 4 p.m. on Monday, December 1, and around 40 students showed up to participate. It began with opening remarks from Socialist Alternative and YDSA member Ben Fitzgerald HC’26, as well as Elan Axelbank, an organizer with the Philadelphia chapter of Socialists Alternative.
“Change never does and never has started in the White House. It starts on the streets when workers and students demand it,” Axelbank said in his opening statements explaining the reasoning behind Friday’s demonstration. Axelbank is a graduate of Northeastern University, where he was a member of Socialists Alternative and helped organize strikes against student debt.
The walkout planned for Friday, December 5, is one of a monthly series of protests organized by Students Rise Up, a network of students across college campuses from groups like YDSA, the Sunrise Movement, and Campus Climate Network that began as a reaction to the Trump administration’s crackdown on free speech in places of higher education. Their main three demands of affordability, security, and freedom are listed and elaborated on in their website.
The original draft of demands included a raise in student minimum wage, a reaffirmation of protection for undocumented students, greater transparency regarding administration wages and money allocation, and ISO and Chesick staff representation on the hiring committees for Dean McKnight and Wendy Reymond’s replacement.
During the discussion, some international students raised concerns about how publicly protesting against ICE could endanger international students on campus and attract unwanted attention. The YDSA removed the second demand concerning ICE from the list, after a group vote.
“We consider it a success that several students at the meeting spoke out against doing an explicitly anti-Trump walkout,” Fitzgerald said over email in response to Bi-Co’s queries about international students’ fears. Fitzgerald elaborated that a discussion of safety concerns was one of the main goals of Monday’s meeting.
The same went for the demand asking for more wage transparency, after it was pointed out that the wages of Haverford faculty were already public knowledge due to the institution’s status as a non-profit organization.
The amended demands for Haverford College read as follows:
- Fund a $25 student minimum wage. Establish a structure for yearly wage increases to account for inflation. Make the Student Employment Taskforce a permanent standing committee to discuss future wage increases.
- Build an administration that fights for all students! Include 5 student seats on President Raymond’s search committee and 8 student seats for Dean McKnight’s search committee, and Chesick and ISSO staff on both.
These demands are posed alongside the Students Rise Up campaign’s national demands of affordability, security, and freedom.
“I’m very glad that we got a diverse range of opinions,” Fitzgerald reflected on the event. Though there was disagreement among the crowd throughout the meeting, he remained optimistic about the general involvement it prompted and what that indicated for the future of protest at Haverford.
“We want to make sure this doesn’t just stop at a walkout…we want to divert this momentum into creating lasting structures of a mass movement at Haverford that can help out with protecting everybody in our community,” he added.
This is a developing story, and will update as the situation develops.
