Call Number:

000.003

Repository:

Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections

Extent:

625 items

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Haverford 2020 Student Strike Collection (HCQ.000.003), Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, PA.

Date:

1972-2021 (inclusive)

Abstract:

Contains various documents and records from the Haverford College student strike of 2020, organized primarily by BIPOC students to attempt to bring about institutional change at the College.

On October 29, 2020, a group of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) students at Haverford organized a strike "in response to the continued racism and anti-Blackness perpetrated by the Haverford College administration." (FAQs For Concerned Parents, ca. November 3, 2020). The strike was precipitated by an email from President Wendy Raymond and Dean Joyce Bylander discouraging students from attending protests in Philadelphia following the killing of Walter Wallace Jr. by the Philadelphia Police. However, strike organizers stated that the email was only one incident in the "long tradition of anti-Blackness and the erasure of marginalized voices that have come to characterize the experiences of students of color at Haverford" (Letter to President Raymond and Dean Bylander, October 29, 2020), including what students saw as an inadequate response to an open letter from Black Students Refusing Further Inaction in June 2020. Organized by Black Students Refusing Further Inaction (BSRFI), Women of Color (WOC) House, the Black Students League (BSL), and other student of color-led groups, the strike lasted fourteen days, ending on November 11, 2020. During that time, participating students struck from classes, on-campus jobs, and school-sponsored activities. Strike organizers issued a set of demands to the College administration requiring institutional commitments to dismantling racist and white supremacist structures--accompanied by budgets and concrete timelines--before they would consider ending the strike.

This collection includes documents created by the organizers and participants of the Haverford College student strike of 2020, as well as students who chose not to participate in the strike, and members of the Haverford faculty, staff, and senior administration. Materials include email correspondence; departmental statements; news articles; social media posts; photographs; posters and stencils; video recordings and transcripts of student town halls, negotiation meetings, and teach-ins; organizational materials pertaining to food distribution and mutual aid; and much more. The majority of the collection consists of images of the protests organized by students, as well as images of the various sit ins and posters related to the strike. Throughout the collection, the idea of the strike as a long-time coming event is emphasized, particularly through inclusion of material from the Haverford College 1972 strike that had very similar goals and demands.