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I was figuring today would be a slow news day on the York University strike. I figured wrong.
- The Liberal party is rejecting calls for a tuition refund.
- CUPE is planning a court challenge to the upcoming back-to-work legislation.
- More than a thousand students have signed on to a class-action lawsuit against York over their handling of the strike.
January 28 Update: CUPE won’t be challenging the BTW law after all. Classes at York should resume on Monday.
That’s the slogan of the students who will be gathering at the Arizona state capitol tomorrow to protest a proposed forty percent budget cut for the state university system.
Organizers are expecting as many as two thousand students to participate in the rally, and are urging professors to bring their classes or excuse absences to boost attendance.
More details on the rally can be found at the Arizona Students Association website.
Democratic Party youth activist Kevin Bondelli has a blogpost up on the split in political organizing “between those of us that consider ourselves part of the youth movement, whose goal is to increase the role of young people in elections and governance, and campaign/government staff who happen to be young.”
His piece piggybacks on Michael Connery post we linked to last week, on how the the Obama Youth Inaugural Ball left young organizers sitting at the “kiddy table.”
The University of Michigan has completed its investigation of a professor who paid a student for sex and allegedly assaulted her.
As we reported at the time, a Michigan law student told police last December that Yaron Eliav, an associate professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, had struck her with his hand and a belt in the course of a sexual encounter they had arranged through Craigslist.
Police refused to arrest Eliav, who claimed the acts were consensual, for assault, instead charging both student and professor with misdemeanor offenses relating to the exchange of money for sex. Both were ultimately fined and charged court costs.
A university spokesperson told the Ann Arbor News last week that Eliav is currently on paid leave, and that an internal investigation of his role in the incident has been completed. She refused to comment on the outcome of the investigation, or to say what administrative actions, if any, had been taken against Eliav, who has tenure.
Not long ago, the York Federation of Students raised the idea of a tuition rebate for students affected by the strike. This morning’s Globe and Mail notes that there’s some precedent for such a move, and that some politicians don’t seem averse to it now.
The same article quotes New Democratic Party leader Howard Hampton as suggesting that his party’s refusal to grant consent to a back-to-work bill may delay the legislation’s passage by only “two or three days.”
Meanwhile, the York administration has released a timetable for when classes would resume if a back-to-work law passes this week. In short, if the law is enacted today, tomorrow, or Wednesday, classes would start up two days later. If it passes on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, classes will resume next Monday.
Finally, there’s the question of what’s likely to happen if CUPE fights a back-to-work law in court. York law professor David Doorey posted some thoughts on that question on his blog last week.
10:44 am Update: Journalist Sarah Millar of the National Post is liveblogging (livetweeting?) the legislature’s question time on her Twitter feed.
1:36 pm Update: Liberal Party sources are now saying that Thursday is the earliest the bill could pass, which would make Monday the earliest York could re-open.
studentactivism.net 
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