SLAP Steps Up

Published April 25, 2007

Monday April 23

10 UVM students began hunger striking in front of the Waterman building in yet another effort to convince President Fogel to agree to pay a liveable wage to all university employees and contracted workers.

“We hunger strike because all attempts at dialogue have been exhausted,” says SLAP’s statement of “why we strike.”

“As leaders in social justice, it is a shame that the University of Vermont knowingly allows workers to live in poverty on this campus when they have the power to change it,” wrote SLAP co-president in a letter given to President Fogel last Friday announcing the hunger strike.

The UVM hunger strikers are part of a national trend, as students at other universities around the country pressure their perspective administrations to pay liveable wages.

In 2005 students at Georgetown University staged a successful 8-day hunger strike for liveable wages, and in 2006 Miami University followed suit.

Currently, students at Stanford University have been on hunger strike since April 12, and at the University of Massachussets liveable wage campaigns are moving in that same direction. The Vanderbilt University is also beginning a liveable wage campaign.

Print This Article

Comments