You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2009.
(This is part three of a four-part series. Parts one and two are here and here.)
The posting at the NSIE site said that the April 1 action was going to kick off at “the 12th Street building” at 2 o’clock. It didn’t give an address.
I Googled up a campus map without too much trouble, though. The New School only has two buildings on 12th Street, it turns out, and since one of them is a dorm, I figured I was looking for the other one. I’d previously arranged to meet someone on the Lower East Side at three o’clock, so I planned to hang around for the first half hour or so of the NSIE event before heading across town.
Iowa’s supreme court has unanimously granted legal recognition to same-sex marriages!
More cool details:
- The ruling will take effect on April 24, three weeks from today.
- Two of the justices behind the unanimous opinion were appointed by Republicans.
- The decision is based on the Iowa state constitution, so it cannot be appealed to any other court.
- It appears that the earliest the decision could be overturned by constitutional amendment is November 2012.
- Such an amendment would require approval by the Iowa state legislature prior to a popular referendum.
The majority leaders of both houses of the state legislature can be expected to oppose any effort to overturn the decision by constitutional amendment — they released a joint statement today hailing the ruling as an example of “Iowa common sense and Iowa common decency.”
It’s been a long, long time coming, but I know … a change is gonna come.
So it turns out that the porn flick that state legislators managed to get banned from the University of Maryland College Park has been playing on college campuses across the country.
And it turns out that the reason it’s been playing on college campuses across the country is that the movie’s distributors have been giving it away to campus groups for free.
And it turns out that the reason they’ve been giving it away for free is that they’re trying to build some buzz around their product at a time when the porn industry is suffering huge losses.
Nice work, doofuses. You just gave a bunch of pornographers a bunch of free press, and the revenue that goes with it.
Sunday update: The Student Power Party, a slate of candidates in UMD’s upcoming student government elections, is planning to screen the film and host a free speech forum tomorrow night.
(This is part two of a four-part series. Part one is here and part three is here.)
On February 10, the New School In Exile threw down the gauntlet. Bob Kerrey would quit by April 1, or they would bring the New School’s operations to a halt. The ultimatum, delivered at a public meeting, was broadcast to the world by the New York Times and picked up by everyone from the Chronicle of Higher Education to Indymedia.
Some NSIE members were coy about whether the threat was meant to be taken at face value, but they left no doubt that they were serious about their goals. “The students, with the faculty’s backing, are trying to get Kerrey out of the school,” one said. “Setting a deadline raises the stakes.”
In the immediate aftermath of the February announcement, NSIE moved effectively to keep their momentum up. They held teach-ins on February 24 and March 4, and posted video from the first online. NSIE supported and publicized an NYU occupation that was modeled on the New School’s own.
But their energy seemed to falter in March. There were fewer events, and less follow-up. Posting on the NSIE website was infrequent, and that decline seemed to reflect a broader retreat in the group.
A student programming committee’s decision to show the porn film Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge in the University of Maryland College Park student union this weekend has been overruled by the university’s president.
UM President C.D. Mote Jr. took the action after Maryland state legislators raised the possibility of cutting state funding to the institution.
Republican state senator Andrew Harris proposed amending the state budget to cut off funding to any college or university that screened an adult film other than as part of coursework, and senate president Thomas Miller indicated that he would support such an amendment. “That’s really not what Maryland residents send their young students to college campus for, to view pornography,” he said.
The college’s vice president for student affairs, Linda Clement, said the decision to cancel the screening wasn’t made on any one basis. “People were concerned about portrayal of women, concerned about violence, concerned about our students and decision-making processes,” she said. “It just seemed like the best thing to do.”
Discussion of the issue in the legislature was halted several times this morning as student groups on class trips filed through the senate chamber. “If you kids are wondering what we’re doing, we’re waiting for you to leave the room,” Miller said at one point. “We’re going to talk about some bad stuff.”
Update: Big shock — the legislators got played for fools by the movie’s distributors.
studentactivism.net 
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