Weekend Survey Shows Lack of Support for Sit-in

Only a third of Harvard students support the 13 day-old occupation of Mass. Hall by the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) and support for PSLM's living wage campaign has dropped significantly in the last year, according to a Harvard Crimson poll.

Although slightly more than half of students support PSLM's principle of a "living wage," defined as $10.25 an hour, the sit-in has made two out of five students less likely to support the PSLM than they were before the sit-in began.

The Crimson poll, conducted yesterday, is the first statistically significant poll on the issue of a "living wage" in more than a year, and the first since the sit-in began.

In perhaps the most significant development, yesterday's poll shows that campus support for a "living wage" has dropped 16 percent since last year. A Crimson poll conducted in January of 2000 showed that 69 percent of the student body supported a "living wage," then defined as $10 an hour.

Yesterday's poll showed only 53 percent of students agree that Harvard should pay its workers a minimum of $10.25 an hour.

PSLM has never claimed any specific "mandate" from the student body for its cause, according to PSLM member Benjamin L. McKean '02.

Exactly half of respondents say that PSLM's occupation of Mass. Hall was not "justified"; 32 percent say they thought it was justified; and 18 percent say they were not sure.

When students were asked if they would be willing, hypothetically, to pay higher tuition if it were necessary to pay for the increase in wages, support for a living wage dropped further.

Only 23 percent of undergraduates and 44 percent of those who support a living wage would support the wage floor if it meant their tuition would rise.

Nearly a fifth of students still don't have an opinion on the living wage, a fact some respondents attributed to a lack of unbiased information.

"We don't have a clear grasp of the issue, all I've heard is heated, hyperbolic rhetoric from both sides," respondent Marcus L. Wang '04 said.

The poll used a randomly selected group of 600 Harvard undergraduates living both on-campus and off-campus and was run from midnight yesterday morning until 8 p.m. yesterday evening.

Respondents were first contacted via e-mail, and if they did not respond, follow-up phone calls were made. In total, the survey reached 372 students, approximately five percent of undergraduates. The maximum margin of error for any single question was approximately five percent and typically less.

--Staff Writer Garrett M. Graff can be reached at ggraff@fas.harvard.edu.