Why I’m Sitting Out

When the students of the 1960s staged sit-ins to protest the Vietnam War, they employed one of the strongest weapons that powerless groups have against authority, to monumentally important effect. The Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) has misappropriated their legacy. PSLM’s campaign against the harsh realities of the capitalist economy is certainly noble. But the living wage issue lacks both the gravity and urgency necessary to justify the sit-in that is now taking place. PSLM has done a disservice to its cause and to today’s generation of students by using our weapon of last resort in an extremely inappropriate situation.

PSLM is trying to use coercion and force to obtain a living wage. Intentionally unlawful and disruptive behavior was an effective political tool during the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam-War movements, which PSLM seems to see as its heritage. But PSLM has employed the tools developed in these movements without good cause, cheapening their legacy and undermining our generation’s ability to use them if a truly worthy cause develops. Coercion is only justified when authorities have exercised their power in an entirely arbitrary and irrational manner. This is not the case today—though it has been in the past.

Harvard administrators have shown respect for PSLM’s concerns about workers’ rights. As PSLM members Benjamin L. McKean ’02 and Amy Offner ’01 wrote on this page on Monday, the group has met with administrators “countless times” over a period of years. President Neil L. Rudenstine’s father and mother, both blue-collar workers, never earned a living wage in their entire careers, and he repeatedly emphasizes how deeply he understands the movement’s concerns. In response to PSLM’s demands, Rudenstine convened an ad hoc committee on employment practices which recommended increased overall compensation for Harvard workers. The committee did not endorse PSLM’s demands because, in the words of Provost Harvey V. Fineberg, it decided that a living wage was a “variable and somewhat arbitrary definition [that] omits key elements of total compensation.”

There are major differences between the living wage campaign and the administration about how to pay workers, but both sides share a fundamental concern for their welfare. As the disagreement is simply about how to handle an issue that is mutually recognized as important—though to vastly different extents—the use of force is clearly not necessary. McKean and Offner are wrong when they say they think PSLM can “use pressure to force the changes that [administrators] will not willingly make.” Unless PSLM starts setting University policy from Rudenstine’s occupied office, it will have to use reason, not pressure, to affect change.

PSLM should capitalize on the common ground it shares with the administration. Instead it has created a great divide between itself and the administration by its rash and excessive actions. When the sit-in is over, administrators’ disagreement with the living wage campaign’s mission will be mild in comparison to their anger at the occupation of Massachusetts Hall. PSLM’s unlawful behavior has needlessly hindered the administration’s ability to do its work—the vast majority of which, even PSLM would agree, betters the University. It has also proved disruptive to Yard residents and put confidential documents at risk, though PSLM members have been much more well-behaved than the students who occupied University Hall in 1969.

Activism should be about ends, not means. But in choosing to occupy Massachusetts Hall, the Living Wage movement has let its protest methods overwhelm its goals. And because PSLM is having such obvious fun occupying the building, their action is open to allegations of frivolity even if their motives are utterly serious.

The existence of the Living Wage campaign proves that people in our generation do not care only about themselves. This is a heartening message, whether or not PSLM’s proposals are sound. It is essential that students constantly monitor the University to make sure that its actions are fair and just. But coercion is the wrong method for a campaign that is supposed to be about dialogue. Forcibly occupying Massachusetts Hall is not an effective way to protest economic inequality at the University. PSLM accuses Harvard of refusing to listen to its concerns, but it has not behaved in a manner that merits the University’s respect. It has given the moral high ground back to the administration.

Joshua E. Gewolb ’01, a Crimson editor, is a biology concentrator in Mather House.