According to SGA President Esénia Bañuelos ‘26, the teach-ins held during Strike Remembrance Week, a weeklong reflection on the 2020 Strike, would be the last teach-ins ever funded by the President’s Office. The announcement came on Nov. 13, during an event reflecting on the progress of strike demands. According to administration, Bañuelos said, funding will henceforth come from Student Life, under the oversight of Interim Dean of Student Life Denine Rocco. Bañuelos also mentioned that Rocco described potentially creating a committee of primarily administrators that would approve or deny future funding requests for teach-ins.
The President’s Office began compensating students who lead teach-ins after it was listed as a demand of the 2020 strike, during which 49 teach-ins were held across 16 days. Bañuelos said the policy, as it currently stands, is that students fill out a form on the website of the President’s Office listing the details of the event, and then they receive a flat rate of 200 dollars in compensation. If there were multiple organizers, they split this money.
When Bañuelos tried to submit the budget for Strike Remembrance Week events, she said she was unable to find the form. She then reached out to the President’s Office, and alleged that in communication with Chief of Staff Shannon Kearns, she was told that the President’s Office will no longer fund teach-ins. Bañuelos stated that Kearns told her she would transfer money for Strike Remembrance Week to Student Life, but that in the future, money would come only from Student Life.
No official announcement has been made to the student body from the President’s Office about this change. Bañuelos reported that until she reached out, she also hadn’t been made aware.
The President’s Office has delayed their response to a request for comment on these changes. The Bi-College News will update the story once administrative comment is received.
Bañuelos then followed up with Interim Dean of Student Life Denine Rocco to get clarity on the change in policy. While the idea has not been officially confirmed, according to Bañuelos, there is a “push” from administration for Rocco to form a committee to approve or reject requests. Bañuelos believes that it would be made up of administration, a student representative, and the SGA President.
Rocco did not respond to a request for comment on the situation.
When asked about reasoning for the change in funding for teach-ins, Bañuelos reported that the President’s Office offered no explicit reason for the change.
According to Bañuelos, such a decision sets a precedent which she calls “dangerous”— as someone who has hosted many teach-ins over the course of her Bryn Mawr career, Bañuelos previously felt reassured knowing the question of compensation was not relevant. “No matter what kind of teach-ins we were interested in holding, we would get funding of some sort,” she said.
Bañuelos worries that under the committee system, administration might exert power over “what information deserves to be compensated, what kind[s] of labor will be compensated, [and]…what counts as real work.” She expressed concern regarding the committee’s potential biases in oversight: “What if I want to talk about something that the committee finds unfavorable? What if they don’t want to pay me?” She also worries that students might feel afraid moving forward to submit funding requests.
Additionally, Bañuelos wondered whether the change in the source of funding would affect the previous compensation rate of 200 dollars per teach-in. For example, if administration might decide that “making a slides presentation isn’t labor; that speaking isn’t labor, or that there isn’t enough of an interactive element.”
Bañuelos contextualized the shift in teach-in funding within the larger timeline of the College making significant changes regarding student visibility on campus, particularly the repainting over quotes from BIPOC alums in the Campus Center and the pausing of both Who Built Bryn Mawr? and the ARCH project.
While the specifics of the changes in funding for teach-ins remain to be seen, Bañuelos felt the timing of the decision during Strike Remembrance Week was “ironic” because it “wasn’t a week of celebration; it was a week of frustration and fury.” She called the change part of a “pattern of regression”, moving backwards to how things were before the 2020 strike began.
Update Jan. 31, 2026: The Bi-College News received comment from Samara Sit, Vice President for Communications and Marketing: “Funding for Teach-ins continues to be available for organizers who apply in a timely manner. The process for submitting a request for teach-in funding was announced in the Daily Digest in August 2024 and is available on the president’s website via the “Teach-in Funding Request Form.” Requests for teach-in funding will be reviewed by a process overseen by the Dean of Student Life’s office. The Teach-In Review Committee will include the SGA President and Vice President, the Social Justice and Equity Chair of SGA, the Dean of Student Life, and representatives from the Impact Center and the Office of Community and Civic Engagement. As the process restarts this semester, the committee will decide whether other representatives might be added in the future.”
