The College Socialists at the College of William and Mary are a leftist organization that aims to amplify student voices, teaching socialist theory and engaging in community organizing. The organization breaks socialism down into three main ideas: individuals should reap the benefits of the wealth they produce, people over profits and rule by informed democracy rather than oligarchy.
The College Socialists advocate on a wide variety of issues from workers’ rights to imperialism. They also educate the student body and help individuals explore their organizing power. Most recently, the club organized a walkout protesting President Donald Trump’s federal funding cuts as well as recent attacks on Gaza. Earlier in the semester, they held a demonstration against ICE.
“There’s not really an issue that we don’t involve ourselves with, because we see that most of the issues that affect students at William and Mary and the workers in Williamsburg are just the consequence of capitalism,” College Socialists member Adam Malinowski-Liu ’25 said.
Last year, the College Socialists formed a Coalition for the Defense of Democracy with over 50 student organizations which requested that the College continue to back student rights, like having police abide by habeas corpus. The College did not recognize the coalition or publicly state that they would continue to uphold these rights. Administration also did not adhere to the terms of the Student Assembly referendum to divest from Israel and audit the College’s investment portfolio. About a quarter of the student body, 2,036 students, voted in favor of the referendum.
“This is a blatant representation of how William and Mary runs this corporation and how they will claim to uphold values of democracy, inclusivity and diversity, but when it comes to student voices that cut into their profits, especially student voices of color, they will very easily ignore those requests,” Malinowski-Liu said.
The College Socialists not only seek to champion the rights of students, but faculty and staff as well, and they hope to address concerns related to fair wages.
“It recently came out that the William and Mary administration is strategically underpaying William and Mary professors and faculty in a pretty extreme way compared to most Virginia universities,” College Socialists member Peter Lyon Huff ’27 said.
The College Socialists also partnered with Food For All on a campaign that unionized the mostly black workforce of cafeteria workers. In response, the College ended the contract with the previous caterer and did not provide the benefits or pay that the workers requested.
“The fact that William and Mary is predominantly run by wealthy, white elites and they are exploiting actively every day a predominantly black workforce really puts into question the gestures that they have made to make up for their history of slavery, of genocide,” Malinowski-Liu said. “A lot of students on campus would wonder what the purpose of the Hearth Memorial is.”
College Socialist members question the values of the College administration. They argue that the College recognizes its racist history without addressing current problems that people of color face on campus.
“The College of William and Mary was founded through colonialism and genocide and slavery, and it continues to uphold these values to this day, and we see this most explicitly in its refusal to divest from Israel as well as its promotion of war criminals like our chancellor Robert Gates,” College Socialists member Abby Carlsmith ’26 said.
Malinowski-Liu added his specific critique of the College’s handling of the divestment referendum and the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“Israel is a genocidal apartheid state, and for the last 80 years has been conducting a genocide against the Palestinian people, as well as constantly seeking out offensive conflict with every other country in that part of the world,” Malinowski-Liu said. “It is through William and Mary’s refusal to divest from Israel and all companies that have operations in Israel that they have clearly put themselves on the side of genocide and the side of genocide denial.”
The club also hosts a weekly book club that covers socialist theory, ranging from foundational theorists, like Hegel, Marx and Lenin, to more modern and diverse authors. For the rest of the semester, Carlsmith said the book club would focus on black and female socialists.
Huff explained how a student recently came to the book club to discuss their concerns about funding cuts to research and worries about their future career opportunities, which ultimately led to the idea for the recent student walkout.
“We listened to the student, we gave her three hours of time and we built a structured plan of organizing how to mobilize her ideas in a practical way,” Huff said.
College Socialists members highlighted the importance of community organizing and student power in achieving political progress.
“Student power was instrumental in building the enslaved peoples memorials on campus and the recontextualization of places of campus, removing colonial and confederate monuments and changing the symbols on the William and Mary scepter,” Huff said.
Members said that historically, the College’s administration has stood in opposition to progress, and students have been the driving force behind anti-racist movements on campus.
“Student solidarity in the ’60s was instrumental in desegregating the College, which happened with the publication of spontaneous articles in The Flat Hat which were against the system of segregation in the south,” Huff said. “People were fired from The Flat Hat at the time for expressing such views.”
College Socialists members specifically argued that the role of students is to advocate for progress and push the administration, particularly when it comes to issues that students of color face.
“Students who are people of color at William and Mary have historically felt very unwelcome. You could look at basically every political period over the last 60 years and William and Mary has been historically very conservative and inflexible and self-contradicting of their claims to uphold democracy plurality and egalitarianism when they have promoted white supremacy time after time,” Malinowski-Liu said.
The organization is also concerned about student rights to protest and express their freedom of speech on campus.
“Student activism on campus is heavily policed, and student organizations like Jewish Voices for Peace and the pro-Palestine groups have been threatened with deregistration if they continue to engage in vocal forms of protest,” Huff said.
Though seeking to empower student voices, the club does not wish to invoke harm upon the College administration.
“We want to have an empathetic, good faith dialogue with the administration, and in the past we’ve had that, and I think that is the legacy of the memorials and the previous decade of student work,” Huff explained.
The College Socialists’ goal is to fight for the dignity and rights of everyone in the Williamsburg community, with an emphasis on openness to students of all backgrounds, faiths and political beliefs. The club welcomes any student interested in becoming more politically active and aspires to unite the College’s diverse student body.
“We would highly encourage people to come to College Socialist meetings just to understand the work that we do, but we would more broadly encourage students to join any social, cultural or political organization for the sake of uniting more of the community and the student body so that we can look out for each other,” Malinowski-Liu said.
College Socialists meets every Monday at 6 p.m. in Blow Hall, Room 322 and hosts book club Saturdays at 3 p.m. in Blair Hall, Room 219. Interested students can find information on the club’s Instagram (@collegesocialists) and by joining the GroupMe linked in their bio.
