Students Rally for Improved EVS Working Conditions

A campaign is advocating for better working conditions for Swarthmore Environmental Services staff (EVS), responsible for the upkeep of campus facilities, after five EVS techs were allegedly dismissed from the college in the past month. The campaign is organized by student-led groups Solidarity at Swat (S@S) and backed by the Students for Palestine Coalition (SPC). A statement from one of the terminated workers, Genevieve Nilan, is linked to a circulating petition, which, at the time of publication, had slightly over 350 signatures. Her statement details how her husband George Grable, another dismissed EVS tech, picked up a vacuum — shipped to a student and wrongly placed in a donation bin — to use for his job cleaning the campus, leading to both of their terminations.

“Public safety did an investigation and saw that [Grable] had taken the vacuum out of the bin. The HR rep told us that we were immediately terminated because this act was against school policy,” Nilan wrote. “We take full responsibility for our mistake and are truly sorry. We would like to apologize and ask forgiveness for our actions.”

Nilan’s statement goes on to praise the college’s environment, including a sense of positivity and kindness from the campus and people. However, another linked statement from Tenia Barrett, the third-named terminated worker, outlines a different working environment, where concerns were disregarded and the workload was burdensome. Barrett was told by her supervisor not to return to work until a situation had been worked out with HR, but that she had done nothing wrong and would receive a call to return. The call never came.

“With absolutely no explanation given about the process going on behind the scenes, I was left hanging, not allowed to return to work,” Barrett wrote in her statement. “Even now, months later, no one has followed up.”

At a rally held outside Parrish Hall on Dec. 9, members of S@S gave updates on what they have heard through speaking with EVS workers, including high workloads after employee dismissals with low compensation and at-will firings. “They have no due process [in terminating employees],” said Rafi Kaporwitz ’27, speaking at the rally. “They have no just cause, [it’s] simply at will, whatever they want. ‘Just ’cause’ is their philosophy, not just cause.”

Bryan Rosario ’25, who has served on First-Generation Low Income (FLI) Council for three years, pointed to EVS workers using free items from FLI-sponsored clothing racks and donation bins as evidence of inadequate compensation. 

“Caring about someone doesn’t involve overworking them and failing to provide them with their basic needs. Caring about someone doesn’t involve making these EVS workers work multiple jobs just to have a livelihood. Caring about these workers doesn’t involve taking away their livelihood at any given moment without any just cause,” Rosario said. “This college does not care about its workers but we do. We have to make this college care.”

Andy Hirsch, vice president of communications and marketing at Swarthmore, wrote that the petition contains false and misleading information. In a message sent to the petition organizers and obtained by The Phoenix from Hirsch, he said: “Contrary to the assertion that [Grable and Nilan] took the package to perform their jobs, they put it in their vehicle at the end of their shift and drove away. When asked about the incident, they admitted to taking the package, but they didn’t offer any explanation along the lines of the information included in your petition, i.e., that they took the package to perform their job responsibilities. Again, I cannot go into further detail about personnel matters, but I am concerned that [SPC is] unknowingly spreading misinformation and soliciting donations under false pretenses, regardless of [SPC’s] intentions.”

In an email to The Phoenix, Hirsch also denied the claim that there is a shortage of supplies for EVS workers, and added that there are ways for techs share feedback if shortages arise: “We care deeply about each and every one of our EVS staff colleagues and recognize how valuable they are to the campus community. We work to ensure that EVS workers are treated with dignity and have the equipment and supplies needed to perform their jobs.” 

In response to the administration, Jonah Sah ’27, president of the S@S steering committee, pointed to the focus on specific personnel matters as a distraction from the broader demands. In a conversation with The Phoenix, Sah said people do not have to agree with S@S on the nature of specific worker dismissals in order to support an end to at-will employment at Swarthmore, under which employees can be fired suddenly for any reason, or even no reason at all. Sah also says the college’s claims of worker support are empty given S@S’s discussions with EVS workers, who express fear of speaking up as well as frustration over supplies.

“We believe that if the school really believes, as they’re saying, that EVS techs are very valuable to the campus community, then they should take this opportunity to change their practices by talking to EVS techs about how they can better meet their needs and changing the way the firing process works so that they are legally unable to fire people just for speaking up,” Sah said in an interview with The Phoenix.

The demands on S@S and SPC’s petition include the reinstatement of the fired workers, the provision of adequate supplies, a requirement to provide “just cause” for future firing, and an increase in workers’ wages. According to the petition, workers with similar titles and job requirements at the University of Pennsylvania make at least $30 an hour, compared to $18.50 at Swarthmore, though the college’s wage for EVS techs will increase to $20 an hour in the 2025 fiscal year. Student activists are pushing for $30 hourly pay, on par with UPenn, arguing that the school’s EVS wages do not align with its Quaker values. 

Along with wages, the petition also referenced SPC’s push for divestment from Israel as not aligning with published values. It demanded the college divest, and focus more on workers wages in the budget. “As the Swarthmore Palestine Coalition has declared since its inception last December, the college’s $3 billion endowment is currently funding the Israeli occupation and ongoing genocide of Palestinians via Israeli companies and defense manufacturers, as well as the prison-industrial complex and the fossil fuel industry,” the petition’s demands read. “This investment strategy does not reflect the educational mission of this institution nor does it align with the Quaker values that the college preaches. We demand that the college divest from these industries and instead invest in the livelihood of the workers on this campus who run this college.”

S@S originally heard of the firings through individual personal connections their members have built with EVS staff. According to Sah, creating personal relationships and community with EVS is crucial to the group. S@S has heard from EVS techs that they don’t feel comfortable raising issues with supervisors because of fear of resulting disciplinary actions. 

“There simply isn’t a means for EVS techs to safely speak up for their own working conditions themselves,” Sah said. “We’re hoping that, as students, we can mediate that. Because there is such a big problem where there’s a culture of fear, and there is no real way for EVS techs to advocate for themselves at their job, then none of these problems are really being fixed. They’re only getting worse.”

In the email sent by Hirsch, the college asked S@S to meet with members of the administration before the rally to correct the alleged misinformation on [Grable and Nilan’s] termination. Sah said the group declined the request because it did not feel it would be productive to meet about “personnel issues,” which are not the focus of the campaign, or have students be those in the meeting room, rather than EVS techs themselves. “What we would like the college to do at this point is have conversations with EVS techs, not with us, because if they would only like to have conversations with us, that’s not how we’re going to change working conditions for EVS techs,” Sah said. “We are not trying to offer hyper-specific solutions to this [specific personnel] problem. We want the college to be forced to improve working conditions in collaboration with the EVS techs.” 

Sah also said the college’s use of the term “community” to refer to faculty, staff, and students ignores that there are inadequate ways for staff and students to connect. He encourages students to talk to EVS workers to connect on personal levels and pay more attention to keeping bathrooms and shared spaces tidy.

“This solidarity among students and staff has a lot of power to threaten the school’s ability to treat its staff members poorly. The fact that these problems crop up at such a theoretically liberal and social-justice-concerned school goes to show that the school is hoping that students don’t identify with staff and don’t take up staff issues as important to them, and hoping that all of these issues fly under the radar. That’s definitely something that we’ve been trying to bridge the gap between, and I think that we’ve had a lot of success in formulating these demands through consultation with EVS techs that we build relationships with.”

Sah also emphasized that this campaign to support EVS techs is different from other protest activities because it can include people not necessarily directly interested in politics or activism. He encouraged students to see Swarthmore as a different place for workers than for students, and to turn their attention to the people working around them to sustain the college. 

“Swarthmore is hoping we turn the other way, that students are too self-absorbed to pay attention to its staff, but we will not look away,” Sah said in his speech at the rally. “I joined [S@S] because I cannot look myself in the mirror if the person who wiped it down is being mistreated. We should all feel discomfort each time we throw our trash into a recently emptied bin because the person who took it out is not paid what they need to survive in Delaware County. Until Swarthmore treats its workers with respect, each and every one of us should feel uncomfortable, and if you want to do something about this discomfort, then you need to fight back.”