Students delegate to Pitzer Trustees to demand rehiring of Adan Campos and protection for immigrant workers

On Feb. 7, 19 students from the Claremont Student Worker Alliance (CSWA) disrupted a Pitzer College Board of Trustees meeting to demand the rehiring of Adan Campos. Campos, a McConnell Dining Hall cook for nine years, was fired last February while his DACA work authorization was being renewed. The students also demanded that Pitzer implement better treatment and protections for undocumented and DACAmented workers, including committing to a policy of not running document checks on workers. 

As students attempted to enter the meeting and delegate to the Board of Trustees, Mike Crawbuck, Senior Director of Facilities and Safety & Event Management, attempted to physically block students from going inside.

Student speakers began by talking about the history of the Rehire Adan campaign. 

Since Campos’ firing in Feb. 2024, students have delegated five times to Pitzer administrators and been met with “excuses, scare tactics and misinformation,” a speaker said. On Oct. 27, Pitzer Student Senate unanimously passed a resolution to rehire Campos. Over 90% of unionized Pitzer staff and 1300+ students signed a petition demanding Campos’ rehiring. 

“We [were] asking that he have a fair chance to be rehired just like anyone else,” the speaker said. 

Detailing Pitzer administration’s excuses for not rehiring Campos, a student described how

“over family weekend, [Strom Thacker] told families that Adan didn’t want to be rehired, that he had gotten another job or that it violated the union contract.”

To combat Thacker’s statements, students handed out copies of a past Undercurrents story in which Campos explained that he had reapplied to entry-level positions at McConnell three times and was turned away for multiple reasons, including being “overqualified.” 

Another student speaker spoke about Pitzer’s failure to protect undocumented and DACAmented status workers. 

In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, former Pitzer President Melvin Oliver released a statement declaring Pitzer a sanctuary college and promising to support undocumented and DACAmented students and community members. Students at last week’s delegation argued that Pitzer’s refusal to rehire Campos, a DACAmented worker, signals Pitzer’s failure to uphold this promise.

“Pitzer has the ability and the responsibility to protect and support any immigrants that are a part of its community, especially its immigrant workers,” a student speaker said. “By not rehiring Adan, Pitzer has failed its community.”

One student posed the question: “How is this college a sanctuary when it fires beloved community members and the very people it promised to protect?” 

Other students referenced the Claremont Colleges’ history of exploitative practices against undocumented and underdocumented workers. In 2011, Pomona College ran an internal audit of their faculty, staff and student workers, resulting in the termination of 17 employees who failed to provide their documents for verification. In the ensuing protests, Pomona called the Claremont Police Department, who arrested 15 protestors, including Pitzer Professor José Calderón. 

Pitzer has also had its share of exploitative labor issues in the past. In 2023, in an effort to prevent dining workers from unionizing, Bon Appetit General Manager Miguel Menjivar discouraged subcontracted workers from supporting the union, and the Bon Appetit Management Company later fired three McConnell workers for alleged union support.

Student speakers urged Pitzer to do better and protect the undocumented and underdocumented workers in their staff, which includes rehiring Campos.

“Pitzer profits from undocumented labor. Pitzer gets its community activism reputation by working with organizations that serve undocumented people,” one student said. “Pitzer must do everything it can to protect undocumented workers, community partners and students, or else it is just exploiting undocumented people.”

Speakers described Pitzer’s refusal to listen to their students and workers and rehire Adan as a betrayal of the College’s core value of social responsibility. 

“As you are here talking about navigating difficult conversations and values of activism and social responsibility, we are the ones finding ourselves upholding these values,” a student said, “in spite of what Pitzer administration is doing instead of because of it. All it takes is a signature on a piece of paper to give Adan a fair deal back.”

Students ended the delegation with chants of “we’ll be back,” emphasizing that the fight to Rehire Adan was still going strong.