Provost said she planned to bring a resolution of support before the Somerville Board of Aldermen, while Jehlen said that she and colleagues in the State Legislature had written to Tufts President Lawrence Bacow.

The recent appointment of Bacow, a Harvard alumnus who joined Tufts this year from MIT, has not altered the administration’s stance, according to Gustavo Arias, a custodian at Tufts since 1995 and member of SEIU’s negotiating committee.

“We thought it would be different, but we see no response, nothing positive,” he said.

The Tufts news office did not return calls for comment.

Joining the demonstrators were about 15 members of PSLM.

Roona Ray ’02 spoke briefly on the “direct connection” between the Harvard and Tufts communities.

“It’s a struggle that’s being replicated around the country as the movement for workers’ rights really grows,”she said.

SLAM’s co-founder, Tufts senior Iris Halpern, is a veteran of the PSLM’s sit-in in Mass. Hall.

According to Benjamin L. McKean ’02, “The Tufts students were a huge help for us. It’s a matter of returning [their] support.”

Despite the precedent set last year at Bendetson and at Harvard’s Mass. Hall, and an initial meeting with Bacow that Halpern said she “[didn’t] think was promising,” Flores said that the group hoped that a disruption like that at Harvard last spring would not be necessary.

“[The Mass. Hall sit-in] helps to scare the administration because they don’t want it to come to that. Neither do we,” Flores said. McKean, who is also a Crimson editor, concurred that last year’s sit-in had changed the landscape for groups like SLAM.

“It’s certainly true that the [Mass. Hall] sit-in raised the visibility of these efforts and made it easier for people to look at doing something like this,” he said.

And according to McKean, SLAM is only one among a several new student groups pursuing living wage issues, as the ranks of these groups have swelled nationally from 20 last spring to 55 this fall.

—Staff writer Ross A. Macdonald can be reached at jrmacdon@fas.harvard.edu.