Some might say climbing the steps to the president's office requires turning your back on the Living Wage Campaign, which starves and strikes on steps across the street at the Rotunda. But the campaign's message was heard from Madison Hall, where we met with President Sullivan on President's Day, reviewing the demands and responses shuttled to and fro, ourselves somewhere in the middle.
Wednesday, Feb. 8, the campaign issued a list of demands for the administration to address by Friday, Feb. 17. President Sullivan sent out a student-wide email on deadline. Calling her message "deceptive, evasive, and totally unsatisfactory," protesters moved forward with their campaign's next steps the following morning.
The campaign then revealed a hunger strike and a new website, along with a list of programs scheduled thrice daily in the upcoming weeks.
It seems like mighty fast logistical work for the campaign to have suddenly orchestrated such a scaling of its efforts. Thus, it can be deduced the campaign's members were prepared to move forward with their actions ahead of time. Given this, the campaign might be charged with making demands in bad faith by planning to take action regardless of the administration's response. More likely, however, the campaign felt it was improbable the administration would meet its demands in what was, it can be conceded, a rather small window of time.
And what is to say the University will suddenly do otherwise? Shouldn't the same degree of skepticism - the campaign cites the administration's decade-long negligence - still hold? And so, why move forward with a hunger strike knowing the University would nevertheless respond with only the same reluctance?
The campaign will say this is precisely why a hunger strike is necessary. Not eating is a "last resort," according to campaign supporter Jason Hickel, intended to change things especially because satisfactory progress has not been achieved, and the uncertainty of success is inherent to the risk and promise of political fasting.
Yet it is still unclear what conditions will now satisfy the campaign's demands. It is obvious the campaign's members are not fasting until higher wages are actually implemented; the bureaucratic process alone would ensure that all meals and strikers will have gone cold.
According to their released demands, the protestors await a "guarantee." As President Sullivan said, "The Living Wage people, I believe, and I might be putting words in their mouth, want me to sign a piece of paper." She agrees with their aims of raising wages, in principle, but added, "I'm picking a way to do it in which the outcome I'm looking at is not a piece of paper I signed, it's what we actually are able to accomplish with the budget."
The campaign is not now seeking a change in remuneration or budgetary policy, but a promise Sullivan is philosophically against and which would carry little weight. Even if Sullivan capitulates, the fiscal ramifications of increasing wages - including hikes in tuition and cutbacks in other areas - will remain postponed until they can be examined by the Board of Visitors, who often look to state appropriations before deciding on changes.
The Living Wage Campaign has moved forward with its timetable without considering the consequences. It has triggered a nuclear device of activism, and we now have 14 human bodies whose biological clocks are ticking.\n
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