Representatives from the Stanford Labor Action Coalition (SLAC) met with President John Hennessy for the second time in two days yesterday to discuss the University’s living wage policy for contracted workers. But the “ongoing negotiations,” as SLAC calls them, have yet to produce any concrete results, raising questions about how long protesting students can maintain their fast, which has now reached its seventh day.

SLAC members will meet with representatives from Human Resources today and plan to meet with Hennessy again later this week.

One week ago, five students initiated a fast to highlight their concerns with the University’s current living wage policy, which they claim does not sufficiently meet contracted workers’ needs. Twelve members of SLAC are now participating in the hunger strike. University officials said yesterday, however, that the fast did not influence the president’s decision to meet with SLAC members.

“I think the one point they really stressed to the students is that the president would have met with them whether they fast or not,” said University spokesperson Kate Chesley. “To some degree, people are simply worried about their health and want them to know that they don’t have to fast to meet with the University.”

SLAC spokesperson Matt Seriff-Cullick ‘08 disagreed and called the University’s statement that the fast had not prompted their decision to meet “disingenuous.”

“We have been sending emails to them for years and we have been refused over and over,” he said. “No one has forced these students to fast except the situation where they feel strongly about something.”

SLAC members have called on the University to agree to implement immediate changes that would increase the salaries of contracted workers currently exempt from the living wage policy. Students at yesterday’s meeting provided Hennessy with a document that Seriff-Cullick called a “reformatted code of conduct.” It specified a number of policy changes that SLAC would like to see implemented.

In a press release issued last night, the University said the ‘code of conduct’ went “far beyond the scope of any discussions appropriate between [SLAC] and the University.”

“[Hennessy] recognizes that it’s a document of great conviction,” Chesley said, “but that it goes far beyond the living wage issue.”

SLAC members said the fast would continue until their concerns expressed in the document are addressed in a concrete manner.

“We want to see signs of implementation immediately,” Seriff-Cullick said. “We want to see a concrete and immediate timeline for implementation.”