Student Hunger Strike at Tufts Enters Hour Number 72

Image credit: Mini-tent city on the quad, @tuftslabor

As of Tuesday, five Tufts students conducting ahunger strike entered their 72nd consecutive hour without eating.

They will continue starving, they say, unless their Somerville/Medford university agrees to delay 35 planned cuts to its custodial staff until a contract renegotiation scheduled for 2016. They will also resume eating if Tufts agrees foregoes the layoffs altogether. In fact, they’d prefer that.

A statement from Tufts Labor Coalition notes that while Tufts administration has expressed concern and a desire to end the hunger strike, an hour-long meeting between student reps and Executive Vice President Patricia Campbell and Vice President of Operations Linda Snyder yielded no compromise.

“The cuts will affect many workers ... many will lose their work, and many of us will receive a heavy load of work,” Adelaida Colon, aTufts custodial worker, said in a statement to the media.

“I have seniority at this job because I have spent many years here. These cuts would not lead me to leave Tufts or lose my job. But, my workload would increase because the work of those 35 people would be placed on those that remain ... We feel discriminated against by the administration of Tufts and by [Tufts’s custodial service provider] DTZ.”

Tufts plans on firing 35 janitors in late May or early June - about one out of six of its entire custodial staff. Students and labor activists have protested the expected cuts since November.

A tent occupation - consisting of approximately 10 tents situated in the Tufts quad, also continues alongside the hunger strike. Though reminiscent of the spirit of Occupy, it appears substantially cleaner and smaller than Occupy’s Dewey Square tent city was in 2011.

Tufts Labor Coalition reports many non-striking Tufts students have undertaken day-long fasts in solidarity with the strikers: sophomores Jenna Sherman and Zoe Jeka, and freshmen Arismer Angeles, Ander Pierce, and Mica Jarmel-Schneider.

Sign up for Medford Patch newsletters and alerts here.