Jonah Sah ’27 is a member of the steering committee of Solidarity at Swarthmore (SaS), a student group advocating for improved working conditions for college employees. In an interview with The Phoenix, Sah discussed the club’s origins, its current projects, and some recommendations for students hoping to get involved in campus activism. A transcript of the interview, condensed and edited for clarity, is provided below.
Zephyr Weinreich: Let’s start with the basics: What is Solidarity at Swarthmore?
Jonah Sah: Solidarity at Swat is an organization that’s trying to bring together Swarthmore’s staff and students to create a stronger community. A lot of our focus has been on what, in our opinion, is the highest expression of that solidarity — community and friendship, which are actually coming together to make improvements in the working conditions here at Swat.
A lot of people in SaS are very interested in politics, and a lot of what we do is pretty explicitly fighting alongside and on behalf of workers. What we really want our group to be, though, is an organization that puts our relationships with staff and with other community members first, and then has the ideology and politics flow from there.
ZW: How did this all get its start?
JS: There have been student campaigns to help workers before. SaS is the most recent iteration, which started, I think, in 2022, as some [Young Democratic Socialists of America] members were campaigning for a higher minimum wage on campus for staff and student workers. They worked on that campaign and made a lot of connections with both staff and student workers as a result of that and eventually formed SaS.
ZW: Let’s linger on this minimum wage struggle for a moment. Who was affected, in terms of campus staff groups? What were the conditions beforehand?
JS: This was encompassing all campus workers: students, [environmental services staff (EVS)], dining staff. It was called the “Fight For Fifteen,” and the idea was to make sure that all workers were paid at least fifteen dollars per hour. A bunch of staff and students were working for less at the time, and the wages have gotten a lot higher since. That’s due to various reasons, of course, but we like to claim some credit for it at Solidarity.
ZW: Have there been other major wins since then?
JS: Probably the biggest success we’ve had was with a campaign in the fall of 2023 to help organize the resident assistants (RAs). Solidarity talked to a lot of RAs, got the union off the ground, and eventually won with around 95% support that winter. Aside from that, I’d say that one of the best things that has come out of Solidarity is that there are a lot of students now who are just very close personal friends with some staff on campus. That’s something I love to see.
ZW: Of course, Solidarity’s successes don’t necessarily come easily. I know that the efforts to support EVS working conditions, for example, are something of an ongoing struggle. Can you tell me about that?
JS: In late fall of 2024, a few EVS techs were fired by Swarthmore in what we at Solidarity saw as an unjust process. It was, and still is, the case that Swarthmore staff workers are at-will employees, meaning that the school can fire them for any reason. We launched a campaign against the firings and against these conditions more broadly. We made a petition and held a rally, and we got to know a lot of students and staff as a result, but unfortunately, the EVS techs were not rehired.
One of our current goals is to work for a fairer disciplinary process for all staff. We’ve also been increasing community building with EVS techs. We’ve started a book club and have had various Learning for Life workshops, which are classes that allow staff and students to learn life skills together. And we’re working on more community activities of that nature for the near future, which we hope will get a lot of staff and students involved.
ZW: Are there any current plans to take further action directly aimed at improving EVS working conditions?
JS: Ultimately, we work things out with the staff members themselves. SaS doesn’t have a script that we follow to try and fix all the problems here. What we want to do is to go to the workers and see what they need and what they think is the best way to meet those needs. It’s a constant, iterative process; We’re always trying to figure out what solutions will work best for each particular workplace.
ZW: This iterative process you’re describing — it largely consists of adapting to external challenges, but it also means responding to problems internal to the organization. Can you tell me about some of these difficulties? What is SaS hoping to improve on this year?
JS: The biggest problem that Solidarity faces is that it is a student organization trying to work on behalf of both students and staff. We get lost when we try to do things only in our capacity as students, rather than in our capacity as student workers or as participants in a shared struggle for labor conditions on campus.
I think that the struggle student activism has faced for a long time, both at Swat and across the country, is that it takes a very particular type of person to go to a college like this, and we need to be able to talk to and work with people who aren’t that very particular type of person. So it’s always a question of accountability. We always need to be as accountable as possible to actual staff members, even people who don’t already agree with everything we think politically. And that hasn’t always been something we’ve achieved at Solidarity. We’ve had times when we’ve been better about it and times when we’ve been worse about it.
ZW: More generally speaking, what’s the club’s stance with regard to student activism at Swarthmore and other colleges? What are you seeing that you like? What would you caution against? What do you think is important to take into account in the context of these unprecedented times?
JS: First of all, Solidarity’s stance about student activism is that it’s great. What we’re trying to do, though, is something that we see as slightly different from activism. What activism entails is gathering people who will already agree with you and organizing on the basis of shared political beliefs. What we want to do is to get people together based on their shared material interests. We want to recognize the commonalities that we all share as a result of our position as campus community members, even if we might not all necessarily agree about everything ideologically. It’s crucial that we do that in order to protect our common interests at the school. We have to leverage our power as the community that keeps Swat running.
What we see as the biggest concern at Swarthmore is that there’s an increasingly obvious gap between the people who control the school’s finances and the people who actually work here and go to school here. The decisions on how to manage the endowment are made by a board that’s full of people from the finance world who come onto campus twice a semester, and that might not have the same interests or the same knowledge about what Swarthmore needs as all the people who work and live here. That’s why we need to get together and protect ourselves.
ZW: When you say that Swarthmore students and staff members have common material circumstances and interests, that strikes me as an oversimplification. Of course, plenty of students are employed on campus, but not the entirety of the student population. In fact, if there’s one thing that Swarthmore students do have in common in this regard, it’s their position as clients of the college. The tuition that Swarthmore students pay supports the administrative body in control of campus working conditions, and almost any serious efforts by staff to resist the administrative body (a strike, for example) would negatively affect Swarthmore student life. Wouldn’t the interests of Swarthmore students and the interests of Swarthmore staff inevitably come into conflict?
JS: That is, frankly, a problem that we aspire to have. If SaS can help workers here realize what their interests are and act on their behalf, even when this isn’t necessarily good for students in the short term, I think we will have done a very good job. To get workers to mobilize like that would be a step up from where we are.
That being said, I think that, ultimately, students’ and staff members’ interests generally come together at Swarthmore, because the real question is: Should the board invest in Swarthmore, or should it grow the endowment? And a lot of the time, investments would be really good for both staff and students. Investment in dorms, for example, would make EVS techs’ lives easier, but would also certainly be good for students.
I would also say that what you’re raising is an issue with any attempt at politics. You can break down any coalition into smaller coalitions with very divergent interests, and that, of course, will be a problem. Our goal is to try to create a bond that can overcome those differences. But of course, like anything, that’s going to be a challenge, and that’s why we’re focusing so much on trying to create connections on campus.
ZW: Let me end by describing a person that most of our readers probably know, and many of our readers have probably been at one point or another. It’s the person who walks past the rally or the petition table, head down, eyes averted. Maybe they’re late for a class they really can’t miss; maybe they’re not sure what the rally’s for, or whether the cause is something they actually support; maybe they’re just scared. Odds are, they’re not evil. What do you say to this person, who really does care about the campus community, but is hesitant, for any reason, to get involved?
JS: It’s very easy to think of activism as this thing that you do if you’re very into politics or have super strong personal convictions. A big part of what we want to do is organize people who don’t think of themselves that way at all. One thing we’ve seen is that at least half of the people in this country, in the world, have what Swarthmore students might not think are the right opinions, and are willing to act on those opinions. I think that this is a failure of organizers to reach them.
Solidarity is supposed to be an organization that will go to people and talk to them about what they can affect materially and locally. People shouldn’t just join Solidarity because they have X or Y political leanings. They should join because they don’t want to go to a school where people are paid so little that they have to work two or three jobs to put food on the table. You don’t have to consider yourself an activist to care about something like that. And caring doesn’t just mean rallies. It’s the things that we do that build community and friendships that make a real difference. It’s not about the “right” ideas, and it’s not about the “right” activities. It’s about being a community member.
Editor’s Note: Rafael Karpowitz ’27, a member of SaS’s steering committee, is also an Opinions Editor for The Phoenix.
Come to S@S meetings at 7:30pm on Sundays in Trotter 203 or shoot me an email if you want to get involved!