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As I noted in my last post, the 62nd annual USSA Congress kicked off yesterday.
Final registration numbers aren’t in yet, but it’s already clear that the Congress is bigger and more representative of the nation’s students than it’s been in quite a while. There are something like two hundred students here, from all corners of the United States — research universities and community colleges, urban and rural schools alike. It’s a good, robust, dynamic crowd.
The first item on the Congress agenda was an afternoon meeting of the 2008-09 USSA Board of Directors, followed by a dinner at which the Association’s officers and David Barrow, the president of the Australian National Union of Students, spoke. Barrow gave a strong speech on the need for global student solidarity, which I’ve invited him to publish on this blog.
After dinner the delegates split into five groups for informational sessions on USSA, the Congress, and how to run an organizing campaign back on campus in the fall.
Today begins with regional meetings, and continues with workshops and meetings of the Association’s largest caucuses, which known as affiliates: the State and System Student Association Coalition, the National Women’s Student Coalition, the National People of Color Student Coalition, and the National Queer Student Coalition.
For the last three of these, “allies spaces” in which students who are not part of the affiliates but identify as allies of their organizing will be held while the affiliate meetings are going on. (I’m going to be co-facilitating the allies space of the National People of Color Student Coalition, and I’m really looking forward to it.) Officer nominations are also today, at lunch.
Update: Obviously I can’t be everywhere at once, so if I’ve missed anything, Congress participants should feel free to post about their own experiences in comments.
I’m on the ground in Denver, en route to the University of Colorado at Boulder, where the United States Student Association’s National Student Congress gets underway this afternoon.
USSA is the country’s oldest student activist organization — this Congress is the 62nd in the Association’s history. It brings together student government leaders and activists from all around the nation every summer to set USSA’s agenda and elect its leadership for the upcoming year. The Congress also features workshops and meetings of USSA’s various affiliate groups, as well as an incredible amount of informal networking and information sharing.
I’ll be here for the whole Congress — among other things, I’m co-facilitating one of USSA’s “allies” meetings tomorrow, and running a workshop on Thursday on media and social networking in student activism. More on each of those sessions, and on the Congress as a whole, as the week progresses, but right now I’ve got a bus to catch.
The conference’s Twitter hashtag is #NSC09, by the way, so you can keep up with events as they develop that way, too.
In a speech this afternoon, President Obama is expected to unveil a ten-year, $12 billion proposal to improve American community colleges.
The bulk of the money will take the form of challenge grants to support curricular and other innovation. The plan also includes $2.5 billion in seed money for facilities renovation and $500 million for free, public domain, online courses.
White House sources say part of the funding for the project could come from the $4 billion a year in savings expected from a pending restructuring of the nation’s college loan system.
With Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings getting underway this morning, now seems like as good a time as any to revisit the Supreme Court nominee’s past as a student activist.
The Daily Princetonian has posted seven letters and articles by or about Sotomayor from her undergraduate days, and taken together they reveal her to be a committed advocate for Latinos and Latinas on campus, an opponent of anti-gay violence, and as the recipient of the university’s highest undergraduate honor for her “dedication to the life of minority students at Princeton.”
In a May 10, 1974 letter, Sotomayor explained a complaint filed by “the Puerto Rican and Chicano students of Princeton” alleging “an institutional pattern of discrimination” at the university. In it she noted that there were then only 31 Puerto Rican and 27 Chicano students enrolled at Princeton, and rebuked the university for its “total absence of regard, concern and respect for an entire people and their culture.” (Sotomayor is quoted in two Daily Princetonian articles on the complaint as well.)
In a letter published on September 12, 1974, Sotomayor and five other student advisors to a search for a new assistant dean for student affairs laid out their criticism of the lack of direct student involvement in the search and the racial and ethnic dynamics of the process. (Sotomayor is quoted directly on the controversy here.)
In a group letter from February 27, 1976, Sotomayor and 38 other members of the campus community condemned the recent vandalism of a dorm room that was home to two students active in the Gay Alliance of Princeton.
And on February 28, 1976, it was announced that Sotomayor was one of two co-recipients of Princeton’s M. Taylor Pine Honor Prize, “the highest honor the university confers on an undergraduate.” The Princetonian article on the honor referred to Sotomayor as having “maintained almost straight A’s for the last two years, but” being “especially known for her extracurricular activities.” (The photo at above right accompanied this article.) A follow-up piece two days later noted that Sotomayor was the first Latino student to win the award.
The United States Student Association’s 62nd annual National Student Congress opens at the University of Colorado at Boulder in eleven days.
USSA, founded in 1947, is the nation’s oldest national student group, and its pre-eminent student government organization. I got my start in national student organizing in USSA, and I’m always thrilled to go back.
This year, I’ll be running a workshop, co-facilitating the Congress’s people of color “allies space,” and lending a hand in various other ways over the course of the week.
I’ll have more to say about the allies space later, and I’ll be blogging (and tweeting) from the Congress once I get there. In the meantime, here’s the title and description of my workshop, scheduled for Thursday, July 23rd, at two o’clock:
Media and Social Networking for Student Activism, Past and Present
Long before the creation of the internet, campus organizers were social networkers. What can their strategies teach today’s activists, and how can today’s students use new media and online networking to advance their work? This workshop, led by historian, activist, and blogger Angus Johnston, will explore the role of technology, media, and human contact in historical and contemporary student organizing.
Media and Social Networking for Student Activism, Past and Present
Long before the creation of the internet, campus organizers were social networkers. What can their strategies teach today’s activists, and how can today’s students use new media and online networking to advance their work? This workshop, led by historian, activist, and blogger Angus Johnston, will explore the role of technology, media, and human contact in historical and contemporary student organizing.
Hope to see you there!
studentactivism.net 
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