Swarthmore College Students Strike for Action on Black, Indigenous Concerns

Photo courtesy of The Phoenix, Swarthmore College’s newspaper.

A strike involving about a third of the Swarthmore College student body began on November 16. The students are protesting what they call the college’s complicity in violence against Black and Indigenous people. The students refuse to attend class, complete assignments, or work at campus jobs until their demands are met.

On November 11, a student group calling itself the Black Affinity Coalition released a list of demands in an open letter to senior members of the college administration and the board of managers. Saying they fear reprisals for organizing the strike, members of the group opted to remain anonymous. 

Appearing in the online daily student publication Voices, the letter outlines demands regarding issues from course content, to mental health services, to recruitment and support of Indigenous students. The group also calls for better support of undocumented students; pandemic hazard pay for Swarthmore non-academic staff, many of whom are Black; and a reduction in the number of Public Safety officers, who they say do not protect Black students. As of November 21, 485 of the college’s approximately 1,670 students had put their names on a spreadsheet indicating participation in the strike. 

Earlier this month, students at Haverford College settled a similar strike after 13 days. Their immediate trigger was a statement by their president, Wendy Raymond, urging students not to take part in Philadelphia protests following the police killing of Walter Wallace Jr. because of COVID-19 concerns. 

At Swarthmore, President Valerie Smith’s email to the community after Wallace’s killing declared “our system is broken.” Coalition students objected, writing in their November 11 letter “The system is not broken; it was founded on the exploitation of Black people and the genocide and erasure of Indigenous people.” They insisted that the college must acknowledge this if it wants its anti-racist efforts to succeed.

The student coalition invited faculty to two virtual town halls on November 18 “to address your concerns and questions.” It then invited Smith, senior administrators, and the chair of the board of managers, as well as faculty, to a third town hall on November 19 to discuss the students’ demands. The students stipulated that they would not attend any meeting without all senior administrators present. 

Smith declined that invitation. In a November 19 email shared with the college community, she wrote, “the type of large gathering you’ve described, particularly one organized by an anonymous group that requires attendance of certain individuals to discuss the specific demands you’ve put forth, isn’t conducive to meaningful and productive dialogue.”

Smith, who is Black, also expressed her sympathy with what she called the students’ “genuine pain — pain emanating from the relentless racial, ethnic, and xenophobic hatred and violence across this country,” as well as the fear and anxiety caused by the pandemic and the exhaustion of remote learning and social isolation. But she also said the students had taken “liberty with the facts” and pressured others to participate in the strike. 

Some faculty members have canceled classes, while others continue to hold them. The college will be closed from November 22 to 29 for Thanksgiving break.