By Maria Hickey, KWMU
St. Louis, MO. – Washington University students staging a sit-in for better worker wages now are going on a hunger strike.
The Student Worker Alliance is asking the university to increase campus workers' wages to nine dollars and seventy-nine cents an hour plus benefits.
While the administration has offered to put a half million dollars more toward salary and benefits, Alliance leader Ojiugo Uzoma says the students want negotiations.
"We made it clear that we weren't leaving until negotiations started and that we would make it either look really bad for them by being dragged out in an ambulance or that they would start negotiating," Uzoma said.
Fourteen students plan to take part in the hunger strike.
Meanwhile the university has released a statement saying the students involved in the sit-in are not complying with Wash U's code of conduct.
The statement goes on to say that the university's plan is a "sincere effort to address" contract workers' needs.