I write as a Bates College alumnus and union member to commend the campaigners of the Bates Educators & Staff Organization and to condemn my alma mater’s heavy-handed and morally dubious tactics to suppress the democratic balloting of a legitimate union election.

The actions of the college’s administration undermine many of the values Bates purports to represent, foremost among them: to treat others with dignity.

Bates makes a big to-do of its Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration, but President Clayton Spencer and trustees seem to go out of their way to demean and disdain many of the precepts Dr. King held dear.

The college would do well to remember that Dr. King was in Memphis to support that city’s striking sanitation workers when he was assassinated, and that his final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” was in praise of labor’s determination and the long struggle for workplace justice. His 1965 address should be a blueprint for how any progressive institution treats its workers: “The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress.”

In 2020, Bates recorded an endowment of $340 million, a figure that has surely risen since. By spending a fraction of that on uplifting its educational and essential workforce, the college could create hope and progress in Lewiston.

Unfortunately, it seems as if President Spencer would rather sit on a pile of money than helm a tide that empowers and enriches the workers of Bates and the Twin Cities.

William Armstrong, Class of 2007, South China