You are currently browsing Angus Johnston’s articles.
On Saturday I linked to an essay on the New School occupation that had been written by an anarchist student who participated in the takeover. This morning I see that there’s a post up at the New School In Exile blog taking issue with some of that student’s claims, particularly regarding the role of the Radical Student Union in the sit-in. Go read ’em both.
The morning also brings a piece on the demonstration from Inside Higher Education, as well as a shorter piece from the Chronicle of Higher Education blog.
The Recording Industry Association of America has announced that it is abandoning its legal strategy of bringing large-scale lawsuits against students and others who download music from the internet.
The RIAA has been bringing such suits for more than five years, often targeting students who used college networks for file-sharing. According to one expert quoted in the Chronicle article, such suits sometimes forced students to drop out of college.
Steven L. Worona, the director of policy and networking programs at the education-policy group Educause, said the move demonstrated that the RIAA understands that “their sue-the-customer, scorched-earth business model has not worked.”
Links from the student protest at the New School:
The website and blog of “The New School In Exile,” organizers/participants in the recently ended sit-in and associated actions.
A roundup of media coverage of the protests.
The text of the agreement between the protesters and university president Bob Kerrey.
An essay by one of the protesters on the lessons he learned in the sit-in.
A clip from Brian Lehrer’s talk show on New York public radio, in which he talks with one of the protesters’ media liaisons.
A Flickr slideshow of the protest, and another set of photos. (Several other photosets are up at NYC Indymedia.)
New School president Bob Kerrey’s new blog.
I’ll be keeping an eye out for more resources and links. Feel free to pass additional ones along in comments.
Students at NYC’s New School have ended a 30-hour sit-in at a campus dining hall, after winning concessions from university president Bob Kerrey.
The students had initially demanded Mr. Kerrey’s resignation, but after internal discussions they replaced that demand with four others: student participation in the selection of a new provost, establishment of a new campus committee on socially responsible investment, changes in use of space in university buildings, and amnesty for all student protesters.
The protest ended at 3:30 this morning, an hour after the students got word that Kerrey had accepted their demands.
Saturday Update: I’ve posted a roundup of resources and information on the New School protests.
About a week ago, this story made the rounds.
A professor at the University of Michigan answered an ad on craigslist for sexual services placed by a woman who turned out to be a U of M law student. In the course of the encounter that followed, he hit her with a belt and slapped her face. She went to the cops, he claimed it was all consensual. The cops refused to charge him with assault, instead charging them both with misdemeanor offenses relating to the transaction itself, and one local (non-campus) cop made an extremely offensive public comment ridiculing the woman who had been beaten for going to the police.
I didn’t post about the story at the time because I didn’t have much of an angle on it, and because it’s often hard to know what to make of a crime story when it first breaks. It wasn’t clear what action the university was taking, or planning to take, for instance.
But now the law student has spoken out, and her statement is very much worth reading. Here it is.
studentactivism.net 
Recent Comments