Roughly 60 students rallied outside of Gerberding Hall again this morning and afternoon in continued protest of the university’s contract with Sodexo, an international food company that supplies concessions for UW’s athletic games. Students formed the Kick Out Sodexo Coalition seven months ago to oppose the company, which they say has a long history of worker abuse, including union busting, harassment, and reported cases of forcing female workers to take pregnancy tests before being hired.

Sodexo’s contract with the school will soon be up for renewal—although exactly when is unclear.

“We’re trying to show them we weren’t joking around yesterday,” said coalition member Scott Davis, in reference to the 27 students who were arrested last night during a sit-in protest in Gerberding Hall. “That wasn’t some fun activism for us, it’s something we felt we had to do.”

The protests continued today as the school’s association of students—represented by the undergraduate and graduate student body presidents—delivered a resolution to the interim president Phyllis Wise urging her to sever Sodexo’s contract with the school.

Davis, who is also the director of Our American Generation—which researched Sodexo's alleged human right's violations—says the campaign against Sodexo has been escalating for months, in part because school officials have been reluctant to hear the group’s demands or give them a straight time line for when the concessions contract is up for renewal. “We were first told it was next March,” explains Davis. “Then a few months ago we found out it was this April. Once we heard it was this April, they postponed it until July.”

The coalition fears the contract renewal was postponed until summer so that “students won’t be around to make a rukus about it,” Davis says.

Bottome line: “We need to cut this contract.”

President Wise's office hasn't yet responded to a request for comment.