I stand with the housekeepers of Mount Holyoke College. I stand with the people, mostly women, many of them Black and Brown, many who have given ten, twenty, even thirty years of their lives to this College;

who scrub the floors, disinfect the bathrooms, clean the dorms, and make the campus livable. These women are not an afterthought. They are the backbone of Mount Holyoke. Without them, the College stops.

Mount Holyoke claims to empower women. Mount Holyoke claims to fight for racial justice. But here is the truth: when you deny your housekeepers a living wage, you deny the very mission you claim to embody. You cannot claim to uplift women while driving the women who clean your halls into poverty. You cannot wave the banner of racial justice while exploiting the Black and Brown women who make your College run. To sit on a billion-dollar endowment while housekeepers struggle to survive is not thrift. It is hypocrisy. It is exploitation. It is violence.

These housekeepers have asked for so little compared to what Mount Holyoke has. Their raises, over three years, would amount to less than one one-hundredth of one percent of the College’s endowment. A fraction of a fraction. A rounding error. And yet the College has chosen to squeeze these women harder, pile more work on their backs, and stall their contract for months. That is not the behavior of an institution committed to equity. That is the behavior of an institution comfortable with injustice.

The housekeepers have shown extraordinary courage. They have cleaned through pandemics, through budget cuts, through constant disrespect. And now, they are standing up, not only for themselves, but for every woman who has ever been told her work does not matter, for every Black and Brown worker who has been expected to give everything and receive nothing.

I stand with the housekeepers. And I call on Mount Holyoke to stand with them too. Pay them a living wage. Respect their labor. Honor their years of service. Without them, there is no Mount Holyoke.

Until you do, every speech about women’s empowerment, every statement about racial justice, every polished word about equity is hollow. Until you do, Mount Holyoke is teaching its students the worst lesson of all: that slogans matter more than people, that the College’s wealth matters more than women’s dignity.

Adrienne Wallace ’07