It’s a gross understatement to say a lot has changed in the year since students converged on Johnson Hall and turned a protest for the Worker Rights Consortium into a 24-hour-a-day, 10-day affair that captured national headlines.
Everything has changed since April 4, 2000, when protesters interrupted the formal atmosphere of the administration building with tents on the lawn, guitars, massive posters of University President Dave Frohnmayer with a Nike swoosh over his mouth– and when 14 students were arrested for refusing to leave the building until Frohnmayer signed a WRC contract.
Since the protest, the school’s commitment to the WRC and all labor monitoring groups has dissolved. Much of the momentum student activists built during last spring’s protest has disappeared, and many who called Johnson Hall home for 10 days said they have become more jaded with the University decision-making process.
But they added the campus shouldn’t expect the worker rights issue to disappear completely this summer — it just might move from the steps of Johnson Hall to the steps of the Oregon capitol.
The state Board of Higher Education killed the University’s WRC ties when it passed an administrative rule barring schools from joining any existing monitoring group. Many student activists said the fight will now shift from the University to the Oregon Legislature instead.
Melissa Unger said despite the idealism she felt while camping outside Johnson Hall and being arrested during the second day of the protest, she can’t help but feel a twinge of cynicism when she walks by the administration building today. She said those feelings started the day Frohnmayer signed a one-year contract with the WRC, and she knew the school’s term with the group might be short.
“There was a feeling that, ‘This is awesome. It’s what we’ve been working for,’” Unger said. “But it was obvious he didn’t want to be on it. We knew at that point.”
Unger, a former student leader in OSPIRG and campaign manager for Executive candidates C.J. Gabbe and Peter Larson, said she questioned last summer how or if she wanted to stay involved with campus activities and activism.
But Unger is one of many student activists who have continued their efforts by working in student government, especially those working in ASUO President Jay Breslow’s Executive office. Breslow was also arrested during the protest.
As legislative organizer, Unger coordinated last fall’s voter registration drive, and has lobbied legislators on student issues such as the proposed cuts to the higher education budget for the next two years.
“Student government has the ability to be a student activism threshold,” Unger said.
Unger said her legislative team might pitch a state law regarding Oregon schools’ licensing codes of conduct. She said student leaders and activists should handle administrators and legislators similarly, so she will get the chance to put what she has learned during the WRC fight to good use in her lobbying efforts.
She has learned she must walk into a senator’s office and sound as knowledgeable and articulate as any other lobbyist if she hopes to get the politicians’ attention.
“They both want students in, but they don’t want it to get in the way of what they want,” Unger said of administrators and legislators.
Although last spring’s WRC protest didn’t have specific leaders, graduate Agatha Schmaedick was one of the organizers and a founder of the Survival Center, the main student group that fought for workers’ rights last year.
Schmaedick is still working on activist causes in Eugene, though she said momentum has slipped in the past year. But activism tends to dip and surge, she said, and activity will probably increase as the sun comes out this spring.
In the meantime, she is trying to impart her experience from the past four years to the younger students in the Survival Center, and eliminate turnover problems.
But she said activists also need to seek out state Board of Higher Education representatives and other higher education policy makers whom they haven’t previously asked for support. Now that a higher power than the University has made the decision, activists must discover who their new allies and enemies are at the state level.
“We need to try new tactics. We need to see who is now upset,” she said.
But Schmaedick added she will not be outside Johnson Hall this year petitioning the administration.
“We’re trying to rethink what’s really worth spending time on,” Schmaedick said. “I don’t find it very productive to convince Frohnmayer to do anything because I feel like I can spend all year just trying to get him to just write a letter. But that’s not really going to impact the workers.”
Amid the demands for improved worker rights, a number of demands for improved campus democracy went unanswered by the administration. Chad Sullivan, who is now the University affairs coordinator in the Executive office, said the struggle for more student voice on University committees squelched much of the momentum built during the 10-day protest.
Sullivan is now looking at the next step, which he called an “institutionalized resistance.” During this year, he has worked to assure students are allowed on all University committees, then find students to fill the positions who will responsibly attend the meetings.
Now Sullivan wants to create a permanent structure for student activism with the help of a paid University staff position, much like the staff members who currently work on diversity, women’s issues, University Housing and other major campus issues.
He said the staff member would help eliminate problems that exist because of student turnover in the Survival Center. The person would also be a liaison, helping groups such as the Greek system and freshmen in the residence halls become more involved in campus activities.
But, like Unger and Schmaedick, he agreed student activists need to continue networking with other activists, pass on their experiences to younger students and apply their successes and failures in the past year to their efforts at a state level.
“I am always trying to be more strategic with my message,” Sullivan said. “I need more training.”