Purportedly, it’s on behalf of security guards–though none of them are striking themselves. Apparently there was some discussion about calling this a “fast”–as The Crimson does in a headline–but SLAM (that would be, the Student Labor Action Movement) apparently thought that term was just too lame.
So a “hunger strike” it is! Here’s part of their “communiqué,” which is just precious:
Through this hunger strike, we hope to physically manifest the severity of the treatment received by security officers. We hope to display on our bodies a pale representation of the pain experienced by a parent who cannot adequately provide for her children. We hope to bring this experience into the sight and into the minds of those here at Harvard who perpetrate and benefit from it. By publicly leveraging our own bodies and lives to make ignoring them impossible, we hope to awaken people to the daily ignorance of the private leveraging of the bodies and lives of officers.
I doubt it’ll last very long–it’ll be the first time activists have actually engaged in any real self-denial in recent years if it does.
As The Crimson article makes clear, Harvard doesn’t directly employ these people, and AlliedBarton–a big company with 50 offices nation-wide and clients aplenty–isn’t going to have a bottom line dictated to them by 11 students who are probably keen on the prospect of losing weight anyways.