Learning From Occupy

When asked to rate their support for Occupy Harvard on a scale from 0 to 10, Harvard undergraduates, on average, gave the movement a rating of 2.84. The survey, conducted by students as part of a final project for Statistics 104 in December 2011, was telling—Occupy Harvard did not have the support of the community it claimed to represent.

By the time Occupy Harvard fizzled out in spring 2012, many students and administrators—tired of locked gates, nebulous objectives, and tents in Harvard Yard—were relieved.

But from the ashes of Occupy Harvard arose a new kind of activism. This academic year, conversations in tents have been moved to administrators’ offices, occupying has morphed into voting, and community frustration has evolved into support.

Using these new methods, undergraduate activists have primarily rallied around three issues pertaining to University policy. The Harvard chapter of Students for a Just and Stable Future has worked to convince Harvard to divest its endowment from fossil fuel companies through its Divest Harvard campaign, the Radcliffe Union of Students partnered with the International Women’s Rights Collective to launch the Our Harvard Can Do Better campaign to reform the University’s sexual assault policy, and the Responsible Investment at Harvard Coalition emerged to champion a social choice fund to support socially conscious University investments.

These new activists, many of whom participated in Occupy Harvard in fall 2011, say they have a complicated relationship with the old movement. They have simultaneously exploited the consciousness and connections that emerged on campus as a result of Occupy Harvard while trying to improve on the shortcomings of last year’s activism. In doing so, they have gained what Occupy Harvard never could—the support of students and administrators.

INDEBTED TO OCCUPY

Many activists say that Occupy Harvard laid a foundation for new campus movements by raising the profile of social and environmental justice issues and bringing activists into proximity so that they could work together.

Jennifer A. Sheehy-Skeffington, a graduate student in psychology who participated in Occupy Harvard, said she believes the movement helped raise awareness regarding social and economic inequality on campus.

“Occupy played a really big role in terms of changing people’s consciousness, both at the national level and at the Harvard level,” Sheehy-Skeffington said.

In fall 2011, Occupy Harvard participant Samuel F. Wohns ’14 and many fellow activists he met through Occupy Harvard co-founded the Responsible Investment at Harvard Coalition, a group that he said sprung out of the activist climate.

“As Occupy Harvard was winding down or losing momentum, it seemed like an opportune time to bring together these actors,” said Wohns, adding that many Occupy activists shared aspirations of pushing for change in the way Harvard invests its endowment.

“There was some consciousness on campus, largely thanks to Occupy Harvard,” Wohns, an inactive Crimson magazine editor, continued. “But there wasn’t yet a strategic plan, and we thought maybe we could fill that gap and be an organization that could develop its strategy to take advantage of this consciousness.”

Alli J. Welton ’15, a board member for the Harvard chapter of Students for a Just and Stable Future, helped found SJSF’s Divest Harvard campaign in September 2012. As with Responsible Investment, many of the members of SJSF were once involved in Occupy Harvard.

Welton said that movements like Divest Harvard and the social choice fund were able to form because of the face-to-face connections facilitated by Occupy Harvard.

“It was a really great space in terms of people coming together to meet people and grow the movement,” Welton said of the Occupy Harvard encampment.

Sheehy-Skeffington agreed with the sentiment. “Occupy enabled all of the student activists to come together,” she said. “I got involved because the issue drew me, and then I made friends with all of these people.”

“We all share that vision because we all hung out at that campsite together,” she added.

LEARNING FROM MISTAKES

Though they acknowledge their debt to Occupy Harvard, this year’s activists say that the movement’s tactics—the way it went about starting conversations and bringing people together—alienated much of the undergraduate student body.

Welton said she thinks the lack of student support for Occupy resulted more from disapproval of the movement’s methods than from apathy about the fundamental issues.

“I remember talking with people in my dorm, and they were really annoyed because the Yard was on lockdown, and it was really inconvenient,” Welton said. “But if you talk to them about economic inequality or the issues that the movement was dealing with, they were really sympathetic and they cared about those things.”

One reason for this disconnect, Welton said, was that the insularity of the movement may have intimidated potential supporters. Another problem, she said, was the movement’s rapid escalation. She said that if Occupy had tried to make progress little by little, instead of jumping immediately to occupation and disruption, it might have enjoyed more broad-based support from the student body and left a broader impact.

“I think it taught me a lot about what escalation should be in a movement,” said Welton. “What I saw with Occupy was that they escalated from day zero. You can’t just show up from day zero and try to take over Mass Hall. You have to do the groundwork first of building a broad base of support.”

While Occupy Harvard activists had worked outside the system to build a movement and make their demands, three undergraduate activism campaigns this fall employed a different strategy. Working within the system, they utilized the referendum process buried in the legislative business section of the Undergraduate Council constitution, a process that had not been used since 2006, to generate widespread student support for their causes.

In accordance with this philosophy, RI launched the Fair Harvard Fund, an alternative fund designed to withhold donations that would go towards Harvard’s endowment until the creation of a social choice fund. The method was part of an effort to prove that the movement could quantify support for its cause. To that end, RI secured 450 donations.

“Our theory of change was if we show the administration the broad support on campus, then the University, having seen the withheld money and the massive support from people, would create the social choice fund,” Wohns said.

Sheehy-Skeffington said she believes the activist’s choice of whether to work within or outside of the system is culturally rooted. Reflecting on the differences between student activism in her home country of Ireland and in the United States, she suggested that Harvard students tend to seek to achieve change by working cooperatively within structures.

“I kind of buy the story that how people get to Harvard is they work really well within the system,” Sheehy-Skeffington said. “It’s part of the American ideology that you can work hard, get ahead, and you can get to the top and that’s how you change things.”

COMMUNITY SUPPORT

Occupy Harvard and the new activists both claimed success in achieving their movement’s goals. Occupy Harvard took credit when custodians negotiated a more favorable contract with the University in October 2011 and when Harvard announced in April 2012 that it would no longer reinvest in HEI Hotels & Resorts. Similarly, the activists who advocated more recently for a social choice fund claimed victory when the University announced the fund’s creation in December 2012. Though administrators ultimately acted on both of those issues, however, they did not specify that their changes were directly in response to student activist efforts.

While it is unclear what effect, if any, either Occupy Harvard or the new movements have had in influencing policy, this year’s activism has gained greater community support.

First, the organizers of the referenda were able to accumulate the number of student signatures necessary to include their topics as referendum subjects on the UC ballot. When these referenda went before voters in the Undergraduate Council election last November, all three passed by significant support: 72 percent of student voters supported divesting University funds from the fossil fuel industry, 80.5 percent voted to establish a social choice fund, and 85 percent wanted to reconsider the College’s sexual assault policies.

And although administrators have indicated that they will not divest from fossil fuel companies, they did grant divestment advocates sit-down meetings with University President Drew G. Faust and members of the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body—two conversations that Occupy Harvard protesters were never granted. While Welton acknowledged that conversation does not necessarily translate into results, divestment activists have claimed that the meetings are a step in the right direction.

In this landscape, students say, the tents of Occupy Harvard are a distant memory.

—Staff writer Christine Y. Cahill can be reached at christinecahill@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @cycahill16.

—Staff writer Ginny C. Fahs can be reached at fahs14@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @ginnyfahs.