In our tenth bargaining session, on Tuesday, September 24, we took a stand for a better Wellesley. With more than 20% of our members observing bargaining, our bargaining committee passed back our counter on the Prohibition Against Discrimination and Harassment and read our letter explaining why our union is demanding protections from discrimination and harassment. At the time we read the letter, we had 571 Wellesley community members had signed on: 86 (40%) of tenured and tenure track faculty, 248 students, and 138 alums. There are a total of 114 members in our bargaining unit, and 84 bargaining unit employees or 74% of the total unit, signed our letter.

Protections from discrimination and harassment are fundamental rights and we refuse to use them as a bargaining chip. Our proposal is not only compatible with Wellesley’s existing policies, it affirms and extends the values of equity, safety, and women’s empowerment that Wellesley stands for. We offer the most vulnerable members of our faculty a clear path for navigating discrimination and harassment. For example, an employee can have a union representative support them through the grievance process and there is an explicit timeline that the College must follow when responding to grievances.

Wellesley has always led the way for women in the Academy, and we will not go back from the gold standard for protections from discrimination and harassment.