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For the last couple of months I’ve been helping to facilitate a weekly Twitter discussion on student government called #sgachat. This week’s chat (details here) was on the “student issues” issue — the question of which topics are appropriate for student governments to take on. Should student governments confine themselves to working on “student issues” only, and if so, what is a student issue anyway?

The whole chat is well worth reading, but as I was looking it over I realized that my own contributions to it, posted from the @studentactivism Twitter account, added up to a sort of mini-essay, written in 140-character bursts. Not the most eloquent thing I’ve ever written, but for those who are interested in the subject, it may have some appeal, so here goes…

The “student issue” debate has been around for 75+ years, and activists have answered it in a variety of interesting ways.

Most major student movements have arisen from students addressing big social issues through campus channels.

ROTC in NYC in 1930s. Free (political) speech at Berkeley 1964. Community relations Columbia 1968.

Repro health services on campus 1970s. Apartheid divestment 1980s. Living wage 1990s. Sweatshops 2000s.

All huge social issues, all with a campus angle.

The campus is a home, a school, a workplace, a clinic, a library, a park, a lab. What issues DON’T affect the campus?

Some student govts have always been politically/socially conscious, others not. That’s a whole huge history of its own.

One epidemic problem for student govts is passing resolutions instead of organizing. Big Important Questions invite such posturing.

Student government posturing and resolution-writing is often weakness and despair masquerading as bravado.

Build student govts to do important work on campus and beyond, and writing resolutions will lose its allure.

Student govts shouldn’t need consensus to act, but they shouldn’t deepen campus divisions lightly.

If 70% are with you and 30% are against, part of your task is reaching out to that 30%.

One lesson I learned via my first year in student govt: Other students are almost never your real adversary.

Nothing pleases the people with real power on campus more than students organizing against students.

When students see student govt as effective on issues they care about, “student issues” debates will fade.

Final advice for student govts… In the immortal words of RuPaul, “I got one thing to say. You better WORK.”

“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.”

–Cesar Chavez

In the last two days, both of my parents have emailed to ask why I haven’t updated since my “I’ll be back after the weekend” post.

This is me posting to day I’m not dead in a ditch, and I’ll be back with some very cool stuff very soon.

Taking a bit of an end-of-semester/holiday break. I’ll be back on Tuesday, if not before. Enjoy your weekend!

The New York Times has published a major article on the University of Puerto Rico student strike, after a month of near-total silence from the American press.

The article, which notes that the strike “has crippled an 11-campus system with more than 62,000 students,” compares Puerto Rican student protests to recent student agitation at the University of California.

Not a huge amount of new information in the article, but it’s a good and thorough piece, overall, and worth reading. (I did learn one thing that I hadn’t known, too — that Ricky Martin has tweeted in support of the strike.)