I really do not understand people like Jessica Coggins who calls the Harvard hunger strike "a very alienating tactic." Who is alienated by it and why? Being alienated by a sit-in I can perhaps understand given the physical occupation of space, but what on earth is alienating about a passive tactic like hunger striking?

I cannot escape the impression that the Jessica Cogginses of the world would find any form of protest "alienating," unless the activists received their personal permission in advance to protest.
 

In the good old days, part of the honor of protest was the willingness to accept punishment for standing up for your beliefs. Today's students want the right to disruptive protest (not just carrying signs and giving speeches) WITHOUT any risk of punishment. After all, how would an arrest record look when they apply for jobs or run for president? Too much trouble to explain that they got handcuffed in a quest for justice ... easier just to do something that won't give you a record. Hence hunger strikes rather than sit-ins.

Many Harvard students were unsympathetic to the hunger strikers because there was not much passion behind the cause, even on the part of the security guards themselves. (You didn't see any of THEM hunger striking, or even carrying signs.) And while Harvard students have warm feelings for many of university laborers, the kitchen workers for example, they mostly see the security guards dozing and acting grouchy at their stations in the houses. So there was not much of a family feeling, and that contributed to the dismissive attitude students had about this hunger strike. The hunger strikers seemed to be overreacting, attracting publicity to themselves out of proportion to their cause.
 

Hey 1:48pm, did you read the article in question? It says part of the reason students opted for a hunger strike was that some of them had already been arrested, so I don't think it was fear of having an arrest record that led them to choose their tactic.