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As I mentioned on Twitter, I popped down to DC yesterday for a panel discussion at the Center for American Progress.

Sponsored by their Campus Progress wing, along with USPIRG and the US Student Association, the panel was a discussion of the current wave of activism sweeping California, and the larger questions about college affordability that are raised by that organizing.

In addition to myself, the panel consisted of Victor Sanchez, the president of the University of California Student Association, Bruce Cain, director of the UC Washington Center, and Pedro de la Torre of Campus Progress. The whole thing was deftly moderated by CP’s Erica Williams, and I think it was illuminating and productive in all sorts of ways.

The panel was streamed live on the internet, and I’m told that the video may soon be made available for watching online. In the meantime, check out this excellent writeup from Inside Higher Ed.

“We were told the following: If President Kerr actually tried to get something more liberal out of the Regents in his telephone conversation, why didn’t he make some public statement to that effect? And the answer we received — from a well-meaning liberal — was the following: He said, ‘Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement publicly in opposition to his Board of Directors?’ That’s the answer.

“Well I ask you to consider — if this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the Board of Directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I tell you something — the faculty are a bunch of employees and we’re the raw material! But we’re a bunch of raw materials that don’t mean to be — have any process upon us. Don’t mean to be made into any product! Don’t mean — Don’t mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We’re human beings!

“And that — that brings me to the second mode of civil disobedience. There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it — that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

–Mario Savio

About a hundred and fifty students bearing petitions signed by ten thousand more confronted the Pittsburgh city council yesterday. They were to make their views heard at a public hearing on a tuition tax the council is considering imposing.

If passed, the tuition tax would be the first in the nation — a one percent tax on higher education bills intended to help close the city’s budget gap while doing an end-run around its universities’ tax exempt status.

The bill has been dubbed the “Fair Share Tax,” and its supporters argue that students currently get a free ride, receiving city services without contributing to city revenue. But opponents of the tax note that nearly three quarters of students at city universities already pay real estate taxes (either directly or, as renters, indirectly). They also pay a variety of other taxes and fees — notably, as one student speaker at the hearing pointed out, the seven percent tax on alcohol served in bars and restaurants. “Let’s face it,” grad student Mackenzie Farone told the council, “we are the ones that pay the drink tax.”

Students also point out that the tax would not be covered by financial aid — a poor undergraduate on a full scholarship at Carnegie Mellon would be hit with the same $400 tax as her wealthiest fellow student.

The council is currently split 5-4 on the tax, with five members supporting it. Students are hoping to change one member’s mind before a vote later this month.

If the tax does pass, it is expected to face court challenges, and there is a move underway in the Pennsylvania state legislature to prevent its adoption. Students are also promising to remember councilmembers’ votes when the next city council election rolls around in 2011.

Opponents of the tax have a website here.