A rally in support of library workers Friday reached its peak as more than 100 filled the first floor of University Hall for about five minutes.
Heather Goode, receptionist in the President's Office, was the first to receive the ralliers.
Becca Rast '13, a member of the Student Labor Alliance, asked Goode if the group could speak with President Ruth Simmons or Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Beppie Huidekoper.
"It's really important to us that both Beppie and Ruth understand that there's a lot of support for affordable health care for library workers and that we shouldn't be cutting wages and cutting health care for the lowest-paid workers on campus," Rast told Goode.
"They're not in the building, unfortunately, but I will pass the message along to them," Goode said, and thanked the students for their message.
After a few seconds of tense silence, labor alliance member Alex Tye '10.5 shouted a rally call into a megaphone from somewhere in the packed first-floor hallway, and more than 100 answered. Three members of Providence's What Cheer? Brigade also joined in, with bass drum, snare drum and sousaphone.
After a few minutes, the calls and responses turned to chants of "Don't hide, Huidekoper."
As the University's chief financial officer, Huidekoper oversees the University's bargaining team for the extended library contract now set to run out Monday night.
Huidekoper was not in her office at the time of the rally and did not respond to an e-mail sent Friday requesting comment.
The rally began around 2 p.m. Friday outside University Hall, just feet from the window of the provost's office.
Associate Professor of Africana Studies Corey Walker was the first to speak.
"If you are committed to them, if this isn't just a rally, if this isn't just another demonstration, then if our colleagues have to go on strike, this University has to go on strike," Walker said. "There should be not a class, a student assembly or a worker that reports to work if our colleagues in the libraries are not treated fairly, are not treated with dignity and are not treated with justice. That's our commitment."
Student library worker Jesse Towsen '12 pledged to stand in solidarity with a union strike.
Brian Baggesen, the chief steward of Brown Dining Services' union, said that while he could not speak for his whole union, he would support a solidarity strike with the libraries union.
Karen McAninch '74, the head of the union's bargaining team, told The Herald after the rally that no plans have yet been discussed for a strike, though union members voted to authorize the bargaining committee to use that tool at the union's Oct. 29 meeting.
Negotiations were scheduled to resume Friday at 2:30 p.m., but got underway late, McAninch said, because ralliers migrated from University Hall to the lobby of the Rockefeller Library, near where the bargaining teams were sitting down to begin the day's negotiations.
McAninch said students asked to send a delegation into the negotiations, but the mediator who has been working with the bargaining committees asked that the door remain closed to students.
Originally set to expire Sept. 30, the contract between the University and library union workers was extended first until Oct. 14, then until Oct. 29, and once more until Monday.
McAninch said the bargaining committees have not yet discussed what to do if a contract is not agreed on by the end of the day. The contract may be extended for a fourth time, or workers could proceed without an explicit contract, she said.
