Enough is enough. At first, the sit-in organized by the SWA showed dedication and a laudable effort. Now, however, the event has gone on entirely too long, and seems rather fruitless.
The University has made concessions over the course of several meetings with protesters. The University has promised $500,000 for benefits packages, and the University has agreed to join the Worker’s Rights Consortium. The Chancellor agreed to establish a group for the purpose of evaluating how contractors for the University are chosen. The SWA may not have yet received the $10.05 with benefits living wage they set out to get, but that is no reason to continue down this path. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be much left to accomplish. The two opposing sides seem to be at an impasse, and while the persistence of the SWA was effective and admirable at first, their inflexibility now seems detrimental to their cause.
The situation has become a “he said, she said” catfight between the administration and the students. It’s time to collapse the tents, stand up and go to class. While students are gunning for more money for University employees, their parents’ hard- earned money is going to waste due to all the classes they’ve missed.
The anti-SWA protesters should also be commended. It would have been extremely easy for this group to make a joke out of the cause, or simply to pull pranks on the original protesters as a means of entertainment. Yet the signs, the organized luncheons on the Quad and the dedication this group has shown is just as admirable as the original cause. In particular, it was nice for prospective freshmen visiting for April Welcome to see the dialogue that can occur on this campus. The dialogue sparked by the SWA and anti-SWA protesters showed that issues don’t have to be one-sided, and that everyone in the campus community has an equal opportunity to express an opinion.
The moral of the story is that protesting is a wonderful way to support a cause or anti-cause. This particular issue, however, has become the proverbial dead horse. It seems that there is nowhere for the SWA to go except down. Perhaps students involved in the protest should bow out while they are ahead and move on. While this particular installment of the protest has ceased to progress, that does not mean that the fight is over.
Students should take the administration up on the offer to continue open and potentially productive discussions about this issue. The protest involved a lot of hard work and sacrifice on the part of many individuals. The group’s presence in the admissions office has lost its impact and is no longer forwarding the cause. It’s time to go home.