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Twenty years ago today 14 women — 13 students and a staff member — were murdered on the campus of Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique. Their killer, Marc Lepine, targeted female students in an engineering class and claimed to be “fighting feminism.”

Here’s an article that looks back at the shootings, their aftermath, and the larger struggle against misogynist violence. I’ll update this post with more links and info about memorials as the day goes on.

A reader reminds me that it would be appropriate to acknowledge the women who died by name. They were Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, and Barbara Klucznick-Widajewicz.

Updates…

A survivor of the massacre — then an engineering student, now a government official and a mother of four — comes to terms with her feminism.

The website of a group holding a campus candlelight vigil tonight.

An essay on the impact of the killings on Canadian society.

A collection of links from Spare Candy, one of my new favorite blogs.

Notices were posted at UC San Diego last week about the latest fee imposed by the University of California Regents:

Thanks to my sources on the ground for the heads-up.

My Wednesday Campus Progress panel with Victor Sanchez, the president of the University of California Student Association, Bruce Cain, the director of the UC Washington Center, and Pedro de la Torre and Erica Williams of Campus Progress has been posted in full online.

Thanks so much to Campus Progress for hosting the event.

This is impressive: the administration of the University of California Irvine has given a victory to occupiers of their campus library, and the occupiers haven’t entered the library yet.

Before Thanksgiving, students at UC Irvine announced that they would be staging a library occupation beginning today. Although they didn’t make any formal demands at that time, they did state their belief that students “should have full access to books, computers, and library materials before and during Finals Week.” They asked that the university keep automated book checkout and computer labs open during the occupation. (They also promised not to barricade the building if the university’s response to the takeover was peaceful, and stated their intention to “leave the library cleaner than how we found it.”

That was on November 23rd. The occupation is scheduled to begin at three o’clock this afternoon. On Tuesday the university announced that the library, and three other study centers on campus, would be open 24 hours a day beginning this morning and continuing through the end of finals a week from now.

Planned occupation activities, including study sessions and teach-ins, will continue.

(You can follow this story at the Occupy UCI! website.)

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.