HUCTW

For Elizabeth E. Ruddick '88-'89, substance must take precedence over style.

"The things a lot of activists are doing now are much less flamboyant," says Ruddick, a student organizer for the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) campaign this spring. "They don't always make the news because they're concrete things that affect people's lives."

Ruddick herself, though, was once a part of the visible-protest side of activism. She was one of two undergraduates arrested in the fall of 1986 at a divestment protest outside the Fogg Art Museum.

But during HUCTW's campaign to become the official bargaining unit of Harvard's nearly 4000 support staff, she engaged in what she calls "grassroots activism." Rather than holding sit-ins, she focused on canvassing, communicating and educating the people whose lives the drive affected, she says.

During the unionization drive, students and other members of the University community wore buttons and signed petitions to support employees whom HUCTW said might feel intimidated by Harvard's opposing campaign.

Working in a traditional labor activist role, Ruddick represents a second generation of activist. Her mother and father protested the Vietnam War in the 1960s before returning to academia in New York, where Ruddick grew up.

Torn Apart

But Ruddick says she sometimes feels torn between her obligations as a student and her dedication to social causes. During the last stages of the HUCTW campaign, Ruddick says she was forced to choose between spending 40 hours a week working for the union and studying for exams.

Ruddick, who chose the former and upon graduation next January may begin a career as a full-time labor organizer, sees a difference between the activism of 20 years ago and that in which she participates.

"[My parents] are certainly proud of what I've done. They see the hard choices I've had to make. They don't pressure me either way. But I think things are very different from what they used to be in the '60s," she says.

Although many students today were brought up in liberal homes, where activism was not viewed as radical, the conservative climate of the 1980s has softened protests.

When she came to Harvard, Ruddick says, "I don't think I really expected [any activism] to be such a consuming commitment." However, on the basis of a "previous, more intellectual commitment" to labor issues, she attended union meetings freshman year and became more interested in the issue, eventually joining the campaign virtually full-time.

Besides appealing more openly and broadly than ever to students, new activism combines different issues at the same time it's raising new ones.

In the HUCTW drive, which aimed to organize a work force comprised of 83 percent women, Ruddick says the feminism was the most interesting issue. "Women in general have a lot of the same problems of not being fully recognized for what they do," Ruddick says.

Her work with the union also focused her attention on the task of uniting communities that otherwise would have remained divided, such as the faculty, staff, and student body of the University.

"I've always had a commitment to unions, for working people to gain control over their lives," she says.