As the clock approaches 12 on May 7, I grab my worn backpack and dart out of the Campus Center, the weight of my textbooks reminding me of the sleepless nights ahead. I bolt past the President’s Lawn toward Ballou Hall, Tufts University’s main administrative building, to take advantage of my quick break from finals.
I hear the chants growing. “Monaco, escucha, estamos en la lucha.” The rally has drawn a crowd of 100. As I join janitors and student allies, I witness other students passing. While some stop to observe or participate, most continue, ignoring our message. A thought quickly takes root: why do students have to choose between their personal values and their academic endeavors?
On March 10, the rumor had become reality: the administration slated 35 people, 17 percent of the 207-person custodial workforce, for layoffs at the end of May. Janitors were rallying during their lunch break every day in opposition to these cuts, which were the first in a series of layoffs planned for the next five years. As actions intensified toward the end of the semester, more and more students, faculty and community members from the Greater Boston area joined to support the janitors.
These recent protests were not the beginning of custodial mobilization at Tufts; they were a continuation of organized janitorial retaliation against more than two decades of administrative abuses. In the 1990s, janitors were outsourced to an ever-changing alphabet soup of contractors, stripped of their benefits, forced to take 25 to 30 percent pay cuts, burdened with increased workloads due to downsizing and arrested for trespassing as they peacefully passed out leaflets. Invigorated by the national Justice for Janitors movement, a coalition was formed that resisted through daily picketing, a food drive, fundraising, legal action, letters and petitions, open forums and a graduation protest.
Twenty-one years later, the scene remains unchanged. Facing a new wave of cuts, janitors, their union 32BJ SEIU, students, parents, faculty, alumni, community organizations and city and state officials resisted similarly. They hosted teach-ins and a public forum, conducted a 33-hour sit-in of Ballou, met with administrators, organized rallies, held phone and email banks, passed city council resolutions and held a civil disobedience demonstration in which students and the president of 32BJ SEIU were arrested. However, due to the administration’s obstinate refusal to listen, coalition members staged a hunger strike, occupied space and demonstrated at the Commencement ceremony as a final attempt to prevent the implementation of disastrous cuts before students left for the summer. ***The chants quiet down as Paula Castillo, a Tufts janitor of 18 years, passes the microphone to Orlando, her coworker and compañero. Normally quiet and removed, he grasps the microphone firmly, moves toward the crowd and speaks.
I listen to the longing in Orlando’s voice as he asks to be treated with respect, his short pauses serving to gather the strength to convey a story he knows all too well; one of his two children here, and his familia in the Dominican Republic, all depending on him and the small salary he earns with his blood, sweat and tears.
Listening to him speak, it becomes undeniable that the decision to cut janitors has profoundly detrimental human consequences. Without any assurance of long-term job continuation elsewhere, the families’ strength will be tested and waned. Immigrant communities will remain trapped in the cycle of poverty, systematically stripped of any chance to advance.
I then think of this “community” that the administration flaunts and celebrates. Community is not limited to students, but includes all of the individuals that share our space: students, workers, professors, administrators and residents of Somerville and Medford. The janitors are part of our community. They make Tufts livable. Habitable. A niche conducive to personal, academic and social growth.
The administration’s treatment of Tufts janitors is unacceptable. Tufts has an obligation to protect all of its community members — to be accountable not only to students, but also to the workers whose tireless labor contributes to the university’s growing prestige. So when Tufts cuts 17 percent of its custodial workforce, while administrators make over 15 times janitors’ $30,000 salaries, whose interests are they serving? ***Two weeks ago, most of you were wrapping up summer jobs and sleeping in ridiculously late, making the most of the fleeting moments of summer.
And yet, just two weeks ago, four janitors received layoff notices, despite persistent and creative efforts, including voluntary summer transfers to delay implementation of cuts.
After professors had met unsatisfactorily with President Monaco over the summer, they turned toward direct action to preserve livelihoods. On June 17, professors, students, janitors and others disrupted Monaco’s annual summer picnic designed to celebrate “community”. When Paula waited patiently beside Monaco to present a letter, he explicitly refused her, turned his back and left. His blatant show of disrespect clearly conveys the administration’s heartless, profit-driven agenda: exploit and marginalize janitors, while expecting them to continue slaving for its financial benefit.
Tufts continued to lay off janitors before students arrive back on campus, with potentially five more cuts before the fall semester begins. Cuts continue amidst official news that the university is in the process of expanding 275,000 square feet. No new janitors, including those slated for layoffs, will be hired to compensate for this new cleaning space.
These developments further reinforce Tufts’ damaging prioritization of profit over people. Tufts masks its corporatization of higher learning under the veil of financial security, arguing that the reported $900,000 of savings as a result of custodial reorganization will benefit students and academic endeavors. However, these cuts come amidst a period of financial prosperity in which Tufts enjoys a growing endowment (currently $1.6 billion) due to tuition hikes and increasingly successful fundraising campaigns. Tufts betrays its statement on “citizenship” of “[striving] to be a model for society at large… [fostering] an attitude of ‘giving back’… and [desiring] to make the world a better place” by prioritizing cost-saving plans over the livelihoods of its workers. If administrators truly valued their livelihoods, they would actively explore alternate routes of cost-reduction, including their respective $500,000+ salaries. Instead, they shift the blame of reorganization onto a third party (DTZ) despite maintaining total authority. Tufts’ blatant hypocrisy and fully-entrenched corporate model is undeniable; administrators mask hegemony with active citizenship and robbery with giving. Tufts must be held accountable to its vision statement, claim responsibility for its harmful actions and listen. ***The crowd nods silently in affirmation, validating Orlando’s strength, determination and hope. As I realize the time, I wonder: why must I choose between my personal values and academic endeavors? Why must I prioritize what should be compatible? My shoulders ache under the weight of my bag and under the hypocrisy of not being the active citizen Tufts challenges me to be. Looking at the tired but resistant faces of those around me, I remove my backpack and turn to the janitors. I let out a soft smile of enduring appreciation before reaching for the microphone to speak.
“Anthony Monaco, Linda Snyder, Patricia Campbell and the administration must be held accountable for their obligation to this community. They must make just decisions, be responsible, and most importantly, be response-able; they must listen to community members who voice concern and answer promptly. When administrators not only fail to listen, but work obstinately in opposition, it becomes a moral obligation of every student, every worker, every community member to state, ‘Enough is enough. Not in my name’. As students, we must be held accountable to the same community. We must realize our own tremendous capacity to strike fear in the administration and influence change. We must act.”
