At Saint Mary's College, posters, stickers and business cards are seen across campus for the cause, We Deserve Space, We Deserve Food, We Deserve Pay. The student-led campaign was created as part of the introduction to justice studies (JUST 250) course. The first of its structure on campus, students are expected to form a campaign based on the creating and teaching models of social justice.
Taught by Andrew Pierce, associate professor of philosophy and director of justice studies, he described how the course allows for students to apply practical methods of social justice, apart from theoretical models.
"I'm offering [the class] aligned with a program called Teaching Social Action, which is a nationwide program that tries to help students develop the sort of democratic skills for organizing social change. There are a lot of classes that focus on social justice issues in a theoretical way, by studying past movements or contemporary social justice issues. It's rare for courses to actually have students engaging in social justice campaigns, [and] that's what we're doing in the intro to justice studies course," Pierce said.
The campaign was created by senior Sierra Stone, junior Chancelor Gordon and freshman Emilia Morse to address dilemmas faced by working and out-of-state students when planning resource availability. The campaign is based on three pillars: open access to summer and semester storage in Regina Hall to students who live over 300 miles from campus, to open Saint Mary's Noble Family Dining Hall over breaks and to raise the student wage from $9 to $12 per hour to $12 to $15 on-campus jobs.
[Editor's note: Gordon is a former Viewpoint columnist and photographer for The Observer.]
Gordon mentioned that as an out of state student, "[I] have faced difficulty finding storage options during summer. I also have physical limitations that make it difficult to travel to Notre Dame to eat a hot meal over breaks ... Speaking to friends who are international students and seeing how hard they have to fight to get the support and resources they need ... has glaringly shown me the need for a movement or resource such as our campaign."
She stated that she knows international students who are reconsidering their decision to come to Saint Mary's due to the barriers that they faced on accessible resources.
As a student from California, Stone also discussed the need to make changes for out-of-state students.
"As a senior here at Saint Mary’s, I have gone through the journey of navigating all the logistics of college without the guidance of many others ... I will acknowledge my fortunes and access to some opportunities I have found that not all other students may be able to get. As someone who lives quite far from campus ... I have struggled greatly with the lack of accessible food and storage facilities in my time and the low wages while being dependent on my income as a student employee to keep me in school," Stone said.
The semester-long project required students to brainstorm, plan and implement the curriculum into their projects. This includes determining the social issue they want to address and who is responsible for this issue occurring and that can make changes.
"We reserve a lot of time in class for students to be working in their groups and they spend a lot of time outside of class having meetings and doing various other kinds of activities. Toward the very beginning, they identify the issue that they want to work on and then hone that issue into a specific campaign. Once students have done that, the next step is to identify the person or persons who are actually able to meet those demands ... the right person who's capable of making the change," Pierce explained.
The group has curated events, meetings and volunteer opportunities for those on campus who support their cause of providing students with the demands of their campaign. Morse highlighted that outside of class, "We had multiple meetings with staff members and three tabling events to spread the word among the student body: two in the student center and one in Spes Unica Hall. We still have final meetings with the staff to determine whether our three demands will be met or not."
The group is within the final meeting phase with various administrators as they work on rewriting contracts, reporting petition results and cataloging their campaign in a portfolio.
"While I know that I may not be here to see the changes that may be made from our campaign, I hope that our activism will enact future change towards a more equitable Saint Mary’s for years to come," Stone said.
