The four stu­dents — along with their stu­dent gov­ern­ment, a spon­sor­ing orga­ni­za­tion of the protest — are being charged with harass­ment of a staff mem­ber and dis­rupt­ing the oper­a­tions of a facil­i­ty after par­tic­i­pat­ing in a protest with on-cam­pus food ser­vice work­ers. Offi­cial­ly hand­ed down on Decem­ber 18, the charges were pre­ced­ed by a lengthy peri­od of lim­bo where the stu­dents were threat­ened with charges, but not offi­cial­ly charged, two of the stu­dent orga­niz­ers of the protests told In These Times. If found guilty, they could be put on probation.

Yet four of the university’s stu­dents say they are being pun­ished for try­ing to push Loy­ola to live up to this cre­do. In recent months, Loy­ola stu­dents and work­ers have been wag­ing a cam­paign for cam­pus work­ers to receive a liv­ing wage, and for the admin­is­tra­tion to roll back what stu­dent activists say is a dra­con­ian demon­stra­tion pol­i­cy, which requires stu­dents to request and receive approval from the Office of the Dean of Stu­dents for any on-cam­pus protest not being held on the campus’s Damen North Lawn three days pri­or. (A mora­to­ri­um on sev­er­al sec­tions of that pol­i­cy was recent­ly declared by the uni­ver­si­ty, though it isn’t clear how long that mora­to­ri­um wil be in effect.)

The ​“Jesuit Edu­ca­tion” pro­vid­ed to stu­dents by Chicago’s Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty has five char­ac­ter­is­tics . One, the school’s web­site proud­ly states, is a ​“val­ues-based lead­er­ship” that focus­es on ​“per­son­al integri­ty, eth­i­cal behav­ior in busi­ness and in all pro­fes­sions, and the appro­pri­ate bal­ance between jus­tice and fairness.”

The charges relate to a Novem­ber 20 demon­stra­tion where around 60 pro­test­ers marched into the university’s stu­dent cen­ter and con­front­ed Bill Lan­glois, the cam­pus rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Ara­mark, the food­ser­vice con­trac­tor for which Loyola’s work­ers work. The pro­test­ers read him a list of demands before dispersing.

After being informed of the charges, Lil­lian Osborne, an orga­niz­er with the on-cam­pus group USpeak for­mer pres­i­dent of Stu­dents for Jus­tice in Pales­tine (SJP) Loy­ola, and Melin­da Bun­nage, lead orga­niz­er for Stu­dents for Work­er Jus­tice (SWJ), say they were called in to attend an infor­ma­tion­al meet­ing. (Full dis­clo­sure: Osborne is a for­mer edi­to­r­i­al intern at In These Times.) The pur­pose of the meet­ing, they say, was for admin­is­tra­tors to gath­er more infor­ma­tion about the inci­dent in ques­tion — although none of the stu­dents had been offi­cial­ly charged with anything.

“They’re basi­cal­ly ask­ing you to incrim­i­nate your­self so they can charge you,” says Osborne.

Bun­nage and Osborne believe the uni­ver­si­ty is tak­ing a ​“divide and con­quer” approach, attempt­ing to turn stu­dent gov­ern­ment against the pro­test­ers. Accord­ing to them, the admin­is­tra­tion threat­ened the Stu­dent Sen­ate with pun­ish­ment over the actions of the pro­test­ers. The idea of sanc­tion­ing the entire stu­dent gov­ern­ment in this way, says Bun­nage, is ​“unheard of.”

“It’s real­ly hard right now, not know­ing if the stu­dent body is behind us or not,” she says.

Nonethe­less, one pos­i­tive out­come of the mat­ter, accord­ing to the two, is that a sense of sol­i­dar­i­ty and ​“com­mu­ni­ty spir­it” is start­ing to devel­op on cam­pus. When orga­niz­ers have request­ed exten­sions for assign­ments from their pro­fes­sors, they have acknowl­edged that they are on the pro­tes­tors’ side. Even so, the demands of bal­anc­ing orga­niz­ing with the rou­tine stress­es of col­lege life have not been easy.

“It’s real­ly dif­fi­cult to be a full time stu­dent and be burnt out from orga­niz­ing,” says Osborne. ​“You have numer­ous papers to do and then you’re slapped with charges, threat­ened with meet­ings, you have the admin­is­tra­tion try­ing to turn peo­ple against you. Your men­tal health is not great because there are so many things com­ing at you.”

Both Bun­nage and Osborne say the charges won’t stop them from con­tin­u­ing to orga­nize demon­stra­tions on cam­pus. In fact, they say, the university’s heavy-hand­ed response is, in a way, encour­ag­ing, as it shows the pres­sure being put on the uni­ver­si­ty admin­is­tra­tors is work­ing. The tumult around the charges can be frus­trat­ing, however.

“All of this is dis­tract­ing from what the real prob­lem is,” says Bunnage.

That prob­lem, and the focus of pro­tes­tors’ ire, is the fact that most of the work­ers at Loy­ola lack the health care ben­e­fits that activists say are rou­tine at oth­er Jesuit uni­ver­si­ties. In addi­tion to this, work­ers are paid low wages. While din­ing hall work­ers suc­ceed­ed in union­iz­ing in 2010, Ara­mark refus­es to grant them a pay raise of any more than 25 cents a year, which one din­ing hall work­er calls a ​“slap in the face.”

In addi­tion to this, pro­test­ers are also tar­get­ing var­i­ous actions that they say are sti­fling free speech on cam­pus, which they view as inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed to the strug­gle for work­er jus­tice. The school’s demon­stra­tion pol­i­cy is the most vis­i­ble man­i­fes­ta­tion of this. Loy­ola, a pri­vate uni­ver­si­ty, first adopt­ed the pol­i­cy in response to a series of protests in 2007, sparked by a num­ber of racist inci­dents on cam­pus not dis­sim­i­lar to those ani­mat­ing stu­dent demon­stra­tions now. Its exis­tence brings up the ques­tion of how uni­ver­si­ty admin­is­tra­tors can be trust­ed to fair­ly apply the pol­i­cy when demon­stra­tions have the poten­tial to bring the uni­ver­si­ty unwant­ed, and poten­tial­ly embar­rass­ing, publicity.

Even apart from this para­dox, the pol­i­cy is restric­tive, mak­ing pro­test­ers jump through hoop after hoop to get their action approved. The university’s ​“Demon­stra­tion Pro­pos­al Form” requires orga­niz­ers to spec­i­fy the name of their demon­stra­tion, its start and end time, the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants and a short descrip­tion of the demonstration.

Once the form is sub­mit­ted and reviewed, the orga­niz­er must then meet with a uni­ver­si­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tive to dis­cuss the demon­stra­tion, includ­ing ​“any intend­ed move­ments to oth­er areas of cam­pus.” If the appli­ca­tion is suc­cess­ful, the orga­niz­er then receives writ­ten noti­fi­ca­tion that the protest may go ahead. All of this assumes that such infor­ma­tion is pre­cise­ly known by orga­niz­ers ahead of time, as well as that a protest is not a spon­ta­neous reac­tion to break­ing news.

Pro­test­ers are also not allowed to use ampli­fied sound, nor hold demon­stra­tions at the same time as cer­tain events, such as Board of Trustees meet­ings, when dis­rup­tive action would be most effective.

The demon­stra­tion policy’s enforce­ment doesn’t have a great track record. In 2014, a group of Pales­tin­ian stu­dents orga­nized a protest at a Taglit-Birthright Israel event, a pro­gram that sends young Jew­ish peo­ple on free trips to Israel to ​“strength­en Jew­ish iden­ti­ty, Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties and sol­i­dar­i­ty with Israel.” Although Loy­ola SJP denied it orga­nized the protest, the group was nonethe­less held account­able for vio­lat­ing the demon­stra­tion pol­i­cy. It was tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed, its fund­ing was revoked for a semes­ter and its mem­bers were forced to attend train­ing for how to engage in civ­il dia­logue. Hil­lel, the group which orga­nized the Birthright event, also failed to reg­is­ter its event. The uni­ver­si­ty held it respon­si­ble for break­ing a ​“no solic­i­ta­tion” pol­i­cy and was also required to under­go such training.

Sim­i­lar­ly, ear­li­er this year, when black stu­dents on cam­pus want­ed to stage a demon­stra­tion over events in Fer­gu­son, they were unable to because of the policy.

More recent­ly, three stu­dents who orga­nized a Novem­ber 12 protest in sol­i­dar­i­ty with stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri were charged with vio­lat­ing the pol­i­cy. The charges have since been dropped.

The alleged sti­fling of expres­sion at Loy­ola goes beyond sim­ply pub­lic protests and extends to pri­vate speech. Stu­dents say that in order to pre­vent stu­dents and work­ers from get­ting too close, Ara­mark for­bids its employ­ees from talk­ing to stu­dents. Work­ers allege that they’ve been threat­ened with fir­ing if they’re caught doing so. It’s an espe­cial­ly sore point for din­ing hall work­ers, who like to build rela­tion­ships with the stu­dents who they watch grow up over the years.

“The stu­dents are what make us hap­py and keep us com­ing to work every day, so why can’t we smile and talk with the stu­dents?” one din­ing hall work­er, Janet Irv­ing, asks.

“We see them every day,” says anoth­er din­ing hall work­er. ​“We know people’s names, spe­cial orders, so how can we not inter­act with students?”

Work­ers also allege they’re not allowed to speak in their native lan­guages amongst them­selves, even if, in some cas­es, work­ers’ lack of Eng­lish knowl­edge means they have to rely on oth­ers to com­mu­ni­cate for them. One din­ing hall work­er, Eileen, who has worked at Loy­ola since 2006, was uncom­pro­mis­ing in her defi­ance of the ban.

“This is Amer­i­ca,” she says. ​“You can speak what­ev­er lan­guage you want.”

Liv­ing up to Jesuit values

The Loy­ola stu­dents’ orga­niz­ing efforts have their roots in George­town University’s Jesuit Just Employ­ment Pol­i­cy (JJEP), which was adopt­ed by the uni­ver­si­ty in 2005 after a steadi­ly esca­lat­ing, three-year long cam­paign. The pol­i­cy not only estab­lished a liv­ing wage for cam­pus work­ers — both con­trac­tors and uni­ver­si­ty employ­ees — that was indexed to infla­tion, it also guar­an­teed work­ers’ right to orga­nize. Since then, activists have been attempt­ing to export the pol­i­cy to oth­er Jesuit uni­ver­si­ties around the coun­try — includ­ing Loy­ola, whose stu­dent gov­ern­ment passed a draft of the JJEP in 2013, to no avail.

Although it’s con­trac­tors like Ara­mark that have direct con­trol over their work­ers’ wages, orga­niz­ers believe the uni­ver­si­ty can hold the com­pa­ny account­able. The protests are part of a cam­paign of pres­sure aimed at mak­ing admin­is­tra­tors do so.

It would seem to be a no-brain­er for Loy­ola. Aside from its Jesuit val­ues, it’s one of the few col­lege in the coun­try that offers a mas­ters pro­gram in social jus­tice, and when con­ve­nient, the admin­is­tra­tion touts the school’s com­mit­ment to social jus­tice. In 2006, it launched a mar­ket­ing cam­paign call­ing on stu­dents to ​“use your ethics as much as your Black­ber­ry,” and declar­ing that ​“social jus­tice isn’t just for rock stars.”

The uni­ver­si­ty even main­tains a social jus­tice blog cen­tered on events tak­ing place in Chica­go, on which there is no ref­er­ence to the protests hap­pen­ing on its own cam­pus. The only men­tion of the mat­ter is a link to a Sep­tem­ber 28 arti­cle from Loyola’s stu­dent news­pa­per con­grat­u­lat­ing the uni­ver­si­ty for rais­ing its min­i­mum wage by $1.75 to $10 an hour.

If the pro­test­ers suc­ceed, it will be a sig­nif­i­cant vic­to­ry for work­ers at the uni­ver­si­ty. Sev­er­al of the work­ers who attend­ed the Novem­ber 20 protest talked about the inad­e­qua­cy of Aramark’s wages. For one work­er, Toni Mitchell, the lack of health care ben­e­fits meant her moth­er was pay­ing for her health insur­ance, includ­ing emer­gency surgery she had car­ried out ear­li­er in the year.

“I’m liv­ing on my own,” she says. ​“The mon­ey that I make — I don’t have any kids — is still not enough for me to take care of myself, so just imag­ine if some­one had a fam­i­ly, if some­one had a hus­band and kids.”

For anoth­er work­er, Ivory Lewis, free health insur­ance would mean being able to take on the stock advice about fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty that is so often the con­ser­v­a­tive answer to the plight of low-wage work­ers like him­self. Asked what free health care would mean for him, he replied: ​“I could save.”

Ara­mark could cer­tain­ly afford to pay its work­ers a lit­tle more. The com­pa­ny post­ed a prof­it of $57.2 mil­lion in the fourth quar­ter of 2015, up from $44.5 mil­lion the year before. Its total prof­it for the year was $235.9 million.

Until they do, work­ers and stu­dents say they will keep fight­ing. Despite poten­tial­ly fac­ing pro­ba­tion, and the threat of sus­pen­sion or expul­sion if they’re charged again, Bun­nage and Osborne say it won’t stop them from con­tin­u­ing to protest. As for the work­ers, Aramark’s employ­ees have already been strug­gling for high­er wages and health care ben­e­fits for sev­er­al years now, and their fight will con­tin­ue even after the stu­dents they’re protest­ing along­side have grad­u­at­ed. As long as the Jesuit val­ues Loy­ola espous­es, and falls short of, con­tin­ue to attract social­ly con­scious stu­dents to its cam­pus, they’ll always have allies on hand.

An ear­li­er ver­sion of this arti­cle stat­ed that Loy­ola’s Hil­lel orga­ni­za­tion was not required by the uni­ver­si­ty to under­go train­ing in the wake of a Birthright tabling inci­dent. In fact, the uni­ver­si­ty required the group to under­go such train­ing, and the group com­plet­ed the training.