As Brown reels from federal actions targeting higher education institutions, unionized student workers at the Brown Center for Students of Color are fighting for free speech and programming protections in their contract.
The BCSC’s roughly 50 student workers announced plans to unionize as the Third World Labor Organization in February 2024, citing the desire to “protect the center from censorship,” protect freedom of expression, “ensure Brown values the work of students of color” and “uphold the political legacy of the Third World Center,” the predecessor to the BCSC.
The student workers plan identity-based programming, hold open hours and perform other roles at the University-operated center. The center’s mission is to serve as a “gathering space for communities of color” to empower students of color, cultivate leadership, facilitate critical reflection, foster informed action and promote social justice, according to their website.
But one year after the student workers announced plans to unionize, the University’s bargaining team rejected the union’s free speech, programming and staffing contract proposals in their entirety, according to GLO organizer Hanna Jeung and an email reviewed by The Herald.
The rejection represents a departure from what organizers describe as the University’s previous willingness to negotiate prior to winter break.
These developments come as the federal government moves to enforce a January executive order seeking to eliminate race-conscious programs from educational institutions. At the BCSC, a University-funded affinity and identity-based center, race is central to their work and programming.
In an email to The Herald, Amanda McGregor, a spokesperson for the university, declined to provide additional details about ongoing negotiations.
“As a practice and matter of protocol, the University does not discuss details of labor negotiations in the news media,” McGregor wrote.
Organizers introduced an initial version of the “Programming & Freedom of Speech Article” they asked to be added to a potential union contract during bargaining over the summer, according to Jeung. Through this article, the union is seeking to contractually guarantee student worker input in BCSC’s programming decisions and protect workers’ speech that is a part of programming, they said.
“The original story behind this article is really tied to the legacy, history and origins of the BCSC, which are based in organizing and activism,” said BCSC Multiracial Heritage Series Co-Programmer Soleena Carrillo Ramanathan ’26, a TWLO organizer. “This article was created to really protect our ability to create programming that is based on those original values of the center.”
In an interview with The Herald, Ramanathan explained that she believes BCSC student workers require contractual protections that other student workers don’t because of the nature of their work.
“We require, as part of this job, to be really vulnerable and to bring those identities into our work,” Ramanathan said.
For example, BCSC workers are “often encouraged to use the word ‘Middle East,’ as opposed to naming Palestine,” Ramanathan said. She added that student workers’ speech and programming is “all often regulated in a way that is frustrating and really against what the center is supposed to be and provide.”
“The long-standing federal regulations governing political activities of 501(c)(3) entities (apply) to all academic and administrative units at Brown, including their employees acting or performing in their professional roles,” McGregor wrote. This policy prohibits nonprofits from “directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign,” according to the Internal Revenue Service.
The rejection of the clause followed the departure of Brown’s top labor relations administrator, Assistant Vice President for Employee and Labor Relations Theresa Pollard, who had previously offered a pared-down counterproposal of the free speech article in December, according to a copy reviewed by The Herald.
Before her departure, Pollard sent the counterproposal minutes before the start of a scheduled Dec. 4 bargaining session, according to an email from Pollard to TWLO organizers reviewed by The Herald. According to Jeung, TWLO organizers countered Pollard’s proposal on Feb. 24 but were met with a complete rejection of the articles altogether.
In a Feb. 25 email to TWLO’s bargaining committee reviewed by The Herald, Assistant Director of Labor Relations Ben Trachman wrote that “Brown is rejecting in their entirety both the Programming & Freedom of Speech Article as well as the Staffing Article.”
“We’re at a little bit of a stalemate,” said Jeung, calling the rejection of the free speech article an unwillingness to compromise.
Ethan Schenker is a university news editor covering staff and student labor. He is from Bethesda, MD, and plans to study International and Public Affairs and Economics. In his free time, he enjoys playing piano and clicking on New York Times notifications.
