The ASUO Street Faire is a springtime staple at the University of Oregon. Each fall and spring term, students can stroll down East 13th Avenue to enjoy the wares of food trucks, artisans and resellers. 

This spring, however, East 13th Avenue remained empty. On May 6, ASUO President Mariam Hassan and UO Vice President for Student Life Angela Chong emailed the student body announcing the ASUO Street Faire was cancelled due to safety concerns from the ongoing UO Student Workers strike. 

This decision resulted in an outcry among many students who were excited to picnic in the sun with their friends with some takeout or snag a Mother’s Day gift from one of the artisans’ stands. 

However, it was the vendors who truly bore the brunt of this hasty decision, having been informed of the closure less than two days before the Faire was set to begin. 

I met with Julian Melton, a UO senior and owner of Volume 11 Vintage, to discuss how the cancellation affected him. 

“This would’ve been my sixth year as a vendor in the ASUO Street Faire — it supported me entirely through college,” Melton said. “I recognize that it’s a huge privilege not having to clock into a 9-to-5 job, but it’s still hard going without the Street Faire. It provides 90% of the yearly income I need to pay rent and put food on the table.”

The disenfranchised vendors received a fee refund, but Melton noted that the $250 he received back didn’t cover the costs of mandatory vendors’ insurance or the thousands of dollars he had spent on inventory. 

Some vendors had even come from other states for the event and were left to swallow the cost of their travel expenses. 

Matters were even worse for food vendors, whose product was perishable and could not be salvaged and resold at a later date. 

“Because our crepe cart only does events, the Street Faire is about 20% of our annual revenue,” Brent Hefley, the owner of Happy Go Lucky Crepes, said. “So this impacted our cart as a business, but it also impacted the three 16 through 20-year-olds who work the cart. They’re saving money for school or travel, and the cancellation of the Street Faire was a hit for them.”

Clearly, the cancellation came with a high cost for all involved, but was it warranted? 

Indeed, the administration claimed that the strike posed safety concerns that would render the Faire hazardous. In one email, UO administrators claimed that UOSW picketers’ “disruption” of a “Conversation on Democracy’s Future” event on May 1 created “a threat to health and safety by exceeding fire marshal occupancy limits, blocking exits and intimidating participants.” 

On May 5, the university called the UO Police Department and Eugene Police, clad in full riot gear and batons, to disperse the striking student workers who were occupying Johnson Hall. UO spokesperson Angela Seydel said that this action was necessary “to ensure the safety of those inside and to secure university facilities.”

Despite these justifications, UOSW members and vendors alike have expressed doubts over the actual risk posed by the strikers, especially in light of last year’s similarly unorthodox circumstances.   

“The encampment for Palestine was on campus last year, and we hosted the Street Faire through that,” Melton said. “I spoke to various other vendors and, whether they agreed with the viewpoints of the protestors or not, they never felt unsafe. They never said that anything was stolen or that their business was harmed — many even had record sales that week.”

Melton’s sentiments were echoed by some UOSW members: “It’s very interesting that the Street Faire was cancelled this year during our strike and not last year during the encampment,” Robin Bailey, a sophomore student worker who participated in the UOSW strike, said. 

Bailey offered his hypothesis on why the administration might have had an incentive to label the strike as unsafe: “Our strike demonstrated our power, and that must have terrified UO,” he said. “We were able to crowd out rooms and shut down events, and we did so because our university shouldn’t continue business as usual when it has refused to engage in good faith with its workers for nearly a year.”

Bailey’s words reveal a common theory that emerged across my interviews: the administration was using the ASUO Street Faire cancellation as a PR move meant to diminish the popularity of the strike among students. 

“This is purely speculation, but I think ASUO’s hands were forced by the university,” Melton said. “The encampment didn’t cost the university money every day, but the strike did, and they had a motive to get these students back to work. I feel like I was used as a political pawn.” 

If passing blame onto the union was a tactical move by the university, it appears to be working. Many students outside the fray of union organization, student government or small business operation have never before had cause to formulate a strong opinion on the UOSW. Now, thanks to the deliberate connection between one of their first exposures to the union is tied to the cancellation of a beloved campus event. 

“During the last few days of the strike, I overheard students talking about how they fully supported the strike until the union was responsible for canceling the Faire,” Caleb Camejo, a UO senior, said. “I find it very upsetting that a university who claims to care about students would actively attempt to turn non-union students against those in the union.”

There is no way to know the university’s true motives, but the fact remains that the Street Faire cancellation harmed vendors, strikers and students alike. Personally, I believe the cancellation was unnecessary given the success of the Street Faire last year under arguably more tumultuous conditions.  

“Cutting the Street Faire hurt UO, but settling a contract with student workers was always on the table,” Bailey said. “The administration and its student government chose hurting relationships with their students, faculty, staff, vendors and community over listening to student workers and responding to their needs.” 

The strike has since ended, but the financial strain on vendors persists. I encourage students to seek out other community events, such as the UO Flea Market or the Founded Fest, to support their favorite local vendors before school’s out for summer. 

Furthermore, I implore students to second-guess UO administrators’ explanations for the cancellation instead of taking them at face value. 

As President John Karl Scholz has recently announced in a school-wide email, UO is currently facing financial challenges due to declined out-of-state enrollment, a restrictive state budget and sweeping federal funding cuts under President Trump’s administration. 

As an institution looking out for its bottom line, UO has every incentive to oppose striking workers who seek fairer compensation — and by extension, more money — from the university. 

Is it unfair, then, to suspect that administrators might attempt to paint a striking union in a negative light to achieve this goal, even if it means scapegoating them for the loss of an anxiously-awaited and easily salvageable event? 

Regardless of our personal opinions on the union or the ASUO Street Faire cancellation, I hope we can all show kindness to our fellow students in spite of our disappointment. 

In any situation of hardship, the important thing is solidarity — with fellow students, union members, vendors, and everyone else in the UO community. We are all simply striving for a good education and a livable wage. We need unity, not hostility, no matter how university headlines might subtly divide us.