All of the tents, posters and protesters — gone.
Late Thursday night, the students who demonstrated in support of the Worker Rights Consortium and improved student voice on campus packed up and left Johnson Hall, where they had kept an around-the-clock vigil since April 4.
While some of the protesters’ demands were not met, the main goal of membership in the WRC was enough to end the occupation on the steps of the administration building.
After the University Senate approved a recommendation to join the labor monitoring group, University President Dave Frohnmayer agreed to a one year term with the WRC, which monitors working conditions in factories where University products are made. In March, the Licensing Code of Conduct Committee unanimously agreed to a similar recommendation.
Protesters unsuccessfully demanded that Frohnmayer agree to a five year contract with the WRC and improve University governance by granting decision making power to University committees and increasing the number of students on the University Senate.
Those involved said that they will continue to push for these changes, just not from their tents on the Johnson Hall lawn. ASUO President-elect Jay Breslow, who has been involved with the protest since it began, said meetings to decide what to do next should begin this week.
“The protest was purposefully done on a horizontal leadership plain with no final leader,” he said. “It takes a little longer, but everyone has a say.”
With the protest done, many students have been left wondering what it actually accomplished. The LCCC and senate met at their planned, scheduled times and Frohnmayer signed a one year membership after the senate recommended him to do so, a promise he made in a March 31 e-mail to the LCCC.
“I don’t understand what the protest accomplished,” freshman pre-business major Giovanni Crotti said. “I don’t think the whole thing was justified.”
But Breslow and ASUO Vice President Mitra Anoushiravani disagreed and said the protest was the start for student voice and empowerment at the University.
“The University Senate wasn’t even involved until [Student] Senator Jereme Grzybowski brought it in,” Anoushiravani said.
Grzybowski is one of the student senators who also sits on the University Senate.
Breslow, who, as president of the student body, will be working extensively with Frohnmayer, said the protest definitely raised awareness about the WRC and labor issues.
“We’ve got the faculty rallying behind us now. It’s not going to go away,” Breslow said of the protesters’ issues.
Breslow and Anoushiravani were part of a total of 14 students arrested for trespassing during the protest. Police arrested protesters during a period of three days and issued them citations when they refused to leave the Johnson Hall lobby at 5 p.m. when the building closed.
Although the protesters didn’t get exactly what they wanted, Anoushiravani added that what happened at Johnson Hall focused frustrations students have been harboring for years now.
“The end result is semi-OK. Things haven’t improved as of yet. But I think they’re going to,” she said. “I hope they do.”
On Friday morning the process of repairing the Johnson Hall grounds began. Only a few remnants of the protest, which had become a sign of campus solidarity or a campus eyesore depending on who you ask, remained on the steps. One of the building’s pillars still displayed a “fight the power” statement in sidewalk chalk and a small yellow heart was still visible on the ground near it.
“They did a good job of cleaning up,” said Connie Kentta, a secretary in University Vice President Dan Williams’ office.
The Johnson Hall lawn did not fare as well as the concrete, however. On Friday morning maintenance crews began reseeding the dead patches of grass that were turned yellow, almost white, by the protesters’ tents.
“[The protesters] don’t have the capacity to fix the lawn,” Kentta said. “It’s depressing that the building has to be damaged to make a point.”
Kentta and Wendy Ruffner, Williams’ other secretary, work at desks right next to a window that faces the Johnson Hall steps. They both described Friday as much calmer than the days of protest and Kentta simply called it, “wonderful.”
“It’s very nice to go back to business … [The past week] was hard to concentrate and hard to work,” Kentta said.