The Motley Coffeehouse and Scripps Store were closed on April 17, Scripps College admitted students day, due to student staffing shortages. While The Motley’s barista bar was nonoperational, its lounge area hosted recurring teach-ins that outlined the workers’ demands and recounted the coffeehouse’s history of political organizing.
In light of the recent administrative decision to assign a supervisor — Interim Vice President for Student Affairs, Stacey Miller — to oversee each organization, 77.6% of Motley staff and 95% of Scripps Store staff voted to strike on Friday, according to each of the business’s student co-heads. As work-study students make up the majority of The Motley’s staff and all of the Scripps Store’s employees, managers said shutting down business on one of the most lucrative days of the year was not an easy decision.
“We did not take it lightly, and it did take deliberation with our staff,” Scripps Store co-head Syd Godwin SC ’26 said. “But we did choose this day in particular because we knew that we could reach a lot of people.”
Motley staff said they chose to strike on admitted students day to highlight The Motley’s evolving relationship with the Scripps administration to prospective students. The coffeehouse has similarly closed in the past in solidarity with global and local causes.
“I think that there’s clearly a dissonance between what we are trying to say about The Motley and what is being told to admitted students,” Aynaz Faruqui SC ’28, incoming Motley co-head, said. “And we’re trying to bridge that gap with these teach-ins and with the closure of The Motley.”
“I think that there’s clearly a dissonance between what we are trying to say about The Motley and what is being told to admitted students,” Aynaz Faruqui SC ’28, incoming Motley co-head, said. “And we’re trying to bridge that gap with these teach-ins and with the closure of The Motley.”
Representatives from both organizations led teach-in presentation sessions at 12:45, 2:30 and 4:15 p.m., each attended by approximately 30 people. During these presentations,they shared three demands for the administration: first, policy-related transparency; second, a finalized contract for the supervisory role by May 1; third, a guarantee that they will “no longer be marketed as a student-run business.”
“Without a formal contract outlining the limitations and responsibilities of the role, we’re really up to the discretion of whoever Scripps chooses to hire,” Motley co-head Alex Meecham SC ’27 said, referencing Miller’s “interim” role. “And we don’t even know if we have a part in that.”
Faruqui said The Motley’s historic promotion as a fully student-run business is compromised by this ambiguity.
“It’s a disservice to admitted students and to current students to advertise The Motley in any way that is not entirely accurate,” Faruqui said.
Alongside the scheduled teach-ins, around 20 student workers from the two businesses spoke directly to admitted students throughout the day, handing out fliers about the recent changes, according to Motley barista lead Emily Weiss SC ’28. Weiss noted that speaking out together with staff from the Student Store helped convey a message of collaborative support.
“We’re in the same boat, and I think both of our situations can be stronger if we’re showing a united front as student-run businesses,” Weiss said.
The Motley and Scripps Store also created a “community action petition form” where they ask current and prospective students, faculty, staff and parents to sign and support their demands. At the bottom of the petition, student workers provide an email template that they encourage community members to forward to the Scripps dean of students.
For students who are not on work-study or don’t feel directly involved with Scripps’ historically student-run businesses, Asgar said it would be “very easy to paint this issue as something that doesn’t matter.”
But she affirmed that implementing a supervisory model at The Motley and the Scripps Store affects the entire 5C community, not just Scripps, “because it has to do with censorship.”
“We ask that everyone really think about this issue and take care to understand the intricacies of it and how we are being rendered powerless by every move that the administration takes,” Asgar said.
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