By Ethan Lyne, Co-Editor-In-Chief
At Haverford, the process of putting Customs, a long-standing tradition that resembles an intensive first-year orientation program that lasts all year and is led by students, has been off to a rocky start. A shortage of applications and an earlier boycott by the Student Workers Organizing League (SWOL), has left students and the administration in a bind.
Although the boycott is now over, SWOL captivated the attention of the campus for over a month after announcing their platform at this past Plenary in February, which included a raise in minimum wage for student workers and a salary for all Customs team members. Their goal to pay Customs team members became the center of their work, as they launched a boycott of Customs in an effort to bring attention to the issue. The boycott sparked conversation around campus between the Customs Committee, the administration, and students around the possibility of paying Customs people, which led to a packed Customs Town Hall on March 4.
Paying Customs team members has generated many questions and thoughts among students, such as theoretical questions about whether Customs should be considered work or service, practical questions about any changes in responsibilities since team members would become college employees, and many others. As school began after spring break, SWOL made the quiet decision to end the boycott, as organizers in a general meeting expressed frustration with the administration’s framing of their demands and felt that the boycott was unduly hurting students on the Customs Committee in charge of organizing the program.
Due to the boycott and the ongoing discussion around customs, the Customs Committee has delayed holding interviews with applicants, deciding Customs teams, and beginning the training of members for their various positions. Last year, the process of selecting team members and putting together the teams was completed before spring break on March 8, and training began soon after spring break for the various positions. As of March 24 customs teams had not been finalized.
Customs team applications have been down this year from the past, even after multiple efforts by the Customs Committee to extend the deadline to encourage more people to apply. While in past years, the Customs Committee has struggled with the numbers of applications and sent out follow-up emails to ask for more applicants, the scale of the shortage was greater this year. One of the solutions to the dearth of applications is the creation of the off-the-hall UCA position, where students would complete all of the duties of the UCA but live off the hall.
Asked why they created this position, Customs Co-Heads Joe Spir ‘20 and Nichole Almanzar ‘20 said via email, “We created the off-the-hall UCA position since we did not have enough on-the-hall UCA applicants. After thorough consideration, Dean Glanzer, Michelle Leao, the UCA committee, and us both decided that allowing people to apply to be off-the-hall UCAs would be the best course of action. We acknowledged that many of those who apply to be UCA want to live in the apartments so that they can be off the meal plan. However, since we only have five First Year apartments, every year we lose valuable applicants simply because they couldn’t get one of those spots. Opening the chance for people to apply to be off the hall allowed us to not exclude such applicants.”
They also stated, “We don’t expect other major changes… The changes that we are envisioning are much more timeline-based. The mixers were supposed to be the week after Spring Break, however we are still doing interviews and have had to plan accordingly so that folks have enough time to prepare for them. Since we will be losing a week of training, we may have to restructure how trainings look and possibly move some training or activity during Pre-customs.”
Michelle Leao, Director of Student Engagement and Leadership and Assistant Dean of the College, briefly reiterated via email, “Customs continues to operate under the strong leadership of the Co-Heads and the Customs Committee, who continue to work to move the process forward and have been doing absolutely wonderful work. They continue to evolve the program to best meet the needs of incoming first years and Customs Folk.”
Looking forward, as a result of the demands by SWOL, Dean of the College Martha Denney has convened a taskforce to seek to better understand what interest exists across the campus in paying Customs team members and what the process might look like. While it seems that Customs for the Class of 2023 will likely still happen without serious changes, there is no telling what may happen in the next academic year in transforming the decades-old tradition of Customs.
Image credit: Ethan Lyne
