Alumnae of Scripps College are circulating a petition demanding that the college submit to the demands of resident advisors on campus, who announced a strike last week to force the firing of the current Dean of Students and radical changes to campus policies with respect to financial aid, mental health, and residential life.
“We, on behalf of graduates/alumnae(i) of Scripps College, are shocked and outraged at recent events that have unfolded at Scripps,” the petition begins. “We firmly stand in solidarity with the current Scripps RAs’ strike in response to the administration’s lack of response to these events as well as to several of Scripps’ chronic and long-standing policies and practices.”
Last week, Lara Tiedens, the president of Scripps College, refused to capitulate to student demands and took immediate action to replace the resident advisors (RAs), who take the lead in ensuring student safety within the residence halls and handling unexpected emergencies, with regular security patrols.
“This afternoon, a group of Resident Advisors (RAs) informed me of their intent to go on strike effective immediately, and to abstain from all duties including crisis and emergency response, residential life programming, and other assigned duties,” Tiedens wrote in an April 14 email to current Scripps students and parents. “[M]aintaining a supportive, safe, and high-quality living and learning environment for all students is our highest priority, and the College’s immediate focus is on ensuring we have appropriate coverage for the residence halls. To that end, the Dean of Students has developed a plan to ensure that RAs’ critical duties related to safety and student welfare are covered for the duration of the strike.”
Tiedens’ refusal to capitulate to the RAs’ demands does not sit well with the authors of the alumnae petition.
“We are deeply concerned about your callous response to the RA strike, which did not address any of the causes of students’ exhaustion and exploitation, but instead defended an administrator who multiple students have testified is abusive and criticized the strike when many other methods of engaging with administration have been tried by students, but did not prove effective,” they write. “This is a prime example of how Scripps appears to not be genuinely listening or acknowledging the community’s serious and deep state of grief.”
The alumnae petition also complains that the college’s decision to hire additional staff to stand in for the striking RAs could evoke fears of “police brutality” among the student body.
“Scripps’ only real action in response to the strike has been to hire an outside security firm to police the campus, which only serves to instill fear in students, especially students of color who have personally been or have witnessed their family and friends of color being targets of police brutality and criminalization,” it explains.
Attached to the alumnae letter is a “timeline” that demonstrates the “long history of student activism on campus.” The listed events include a “United Against Hate protest across the [Claremont] campuses following the election of another fascist white supremacist,” presumably referring to current U.S. president Donald J. Trump, as well as the student-led protests that shut down a scheduled event with Heather Mac Donald, an expert on urban crime and policing, at Claremont McKenna College’s Athenaeum. The timeline helpfully notes that Mac Donald “believes the Black Lives Matter narrative is not only false but dangerous.”
Over 200 alumnae have signed the petition, which closes by admonishing the college once more to capitulate to student demands:
“As past students of Scripps College, we demand that there be systemic change at Scripps, pursuant to the thoughtful, well-articulated demands of the current RAs. We stand in strong support of their cause, and would vehemently urge the Scripps administration to listen carefully to the RAs’ voices, and to make a genuine, concerted, and good faith effort to comply with their demands.”
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