Smith College Students Protest

A group of students at Smith College has taken an old protest standby, the sit-in, one step further--about 30 undergraduates have been holding a "sleep-in" in the college's main administrative building for nearly one week.

The students, representing a number of the ethnic and cultural groups at the Northampton, Mass. college, are camping out in the halls to protest the lack of office space available for their activities. The sleep-in began last Friday, following a large rally.

Asking for Space

"We're asking the administration to do its duty and give the organizations space," said Gabriela Hernandez, co-chair of Nosotras, Smith's Latina organization.

The students plan to study, eat, and sleep in College Hall at least until tomorrow, when they will decide whether or not to remain. At one point, approximately 100 students were participating in the protest.

A space crunch for cultural organizations has troubled Smith for more that two decades. Last spring, the need for more space became particularly acute when the college's Black Students Association (BSA) reclaimed the space it had shared with other cultural organizations since 1983.

Hernandez said that rather than resenting the BSA's move, the other cultural groups endorsed it.

"They fought for their space in 1968," she said. "When they took their space back, we supported them."

The BSA and Nosotras currently occupy a small portion of the office space in Lilly Hall, a building advertised by college officials as a multicultural center. But much of the space is being used as offices for Smith's graduate school and school of social work.

The demonstrators are asking that the administration allow the entire building to be used for cultural activities.

Debra A. Bradley, a spokesperson for the college, said yesterday that the Smith administration is "committed to finding [the organizations] more space."

Barbara B. Reinhold, acting dean for institutional affairs at Smith, said a building will be made available for a number of student groups next semester, and said the administration has promised the students a permanent home for their offices by next September.

The administration has also brought in a space planning firm which will begin evaluating the college's space needs tomorrow.

But the protesters remain skeptical of the administration's commitment to providing new space.

"Architects have come in before," Hernandez said. "The administration's not going to learn anything it didn't already know."