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The internet is abuzz with the news that Rutgers paid MTV reality star Snooki more ($32,000) for an appearance than it paid celebrated author Toni Morrison ($30,000). Morrison is delivering the commencement address at Rutgers’ graduation exercises this year, while Snooki did two shows on campus last night. And I’ve got to say, I’m more troubled by Morrison’s paycheck than Snooki’s. Here’s why:
Commencement addresses are traditionally given free or at reduced rates. This is, in fact, the first time in history that Rutgers has paid a graduation speaker. It turns out that the university recently renovated its football stadium, and wants to christen it with a blockbuster graduation event.
There’s a difference in funding, as well. Snooki was booked by a student-run, student-funded programming board whose money comes from student activity fees. The Rutgers University Programming Association exists for the sole purpose of bringing entertainment to campus, and by all accounts this was a popular booking — both of Snooki’s shows were standing-room-only. (Snooki’s fee won’t all go to her, by the way. Her two shows were in a mock interview format, and her interviewer, comedian Adam Ace, charges $2500 for solo appearances.)
Morrison’s fee, on the other hand, is being paid out of revenue from the university’s vendor contract with Pepsi. That money is being drawn out of a fund that is administered at the president’s discretion. It’s not a programming budget. It’s university money. Though Rutgers made a point in media coverage of saying that it didn’t dip into state funds or tuition to pay Morrison, that strikes me as a distinction without a difference, because if they hadn’t used the $30,000 this way, they would have had it available for something else.
I’m not saying — quite — that it’s a bad idea to give Toni Morrison $30,000 to deliver a commencement address, although it does seem a little weird to me to turn the awarding of an honorary doctorate into a paid gig. I’m just saying it’s not obvious to me that universities spending university money on a big-name speaker so they can justify holding graduation in a football stadium is a better idea than students spending student fees on programming that students are interested in.
Several thousand students marched through downtown Montreal on Thursday, demonstrating against government plans to raise tuition for local colleges and universities by more than $1600 over the next five years.
Police say they used pepper spray and stun grenades after a “scuffle” with protesters outside a government building, but one activist who witnessed the events says that students did nothing to provoke the cops.
The students occupying a building at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have made it through their first night, and they’ve released a list of demands:
Because we are residents of Minnesota, and because this is a public, land-grant university,
We demand the right to peacefully occupy space at our university,
We demand that the general public has reasonable access to university resources;
We demand that the university respect the rights of all workers to organize and to earn at least a living wage;
We demand tuition and fee reductions;
We demand that regents be democratically elected by the university community;
We demand that the university treat student groups fairly and equitably with respect to funding and space. We demand student groups on the 2nd floor of Coffman Union be able to keep their spaces.
In doing so, we stand in solidarity with the people of Wisconsin, and students and workers worldwide.
More soon…
Video footage shot in Fortnum & Mason’s Saturday while the store was being occupied by UK Uncut protesters appears to show police asking activists to remain inside the store, and assuring them that they will be allowed to disperse peacefully once outside. The protesters were later arrested en masse as they left the premises.
Of 201 arrests made in connection with Saturday’s demonstrations, at least 138 came at the Fortnum & Mason’s occupation, despite the fact that police and store officials agree that property damage at the action was minimal and violent disruption to the store’s operations non-existent. Police made few arrests at the far more aggressive “black bloc” actions that day, in some cases being videotaped standing by as masked protesters vandalized shops and offices.
Activists from the British group UK Uncut have split off from a much larger anti-cuts protest in London at this hour to occupy the high-end department store Fortnum and Mason.
Protesters are staging the occupation to draw attention to Britain’s corporate tax avoiders, but critics have leaped to criticize the group, claiming that Fortnum and Mason is actually a charitable enterprise, donating all of its profits to charity.
Are they right? Not really.
Fortnum’s is owned by Wittington Investments Limited, which is in turn owned by two entities — the Garfield Weston Foundation, one of Britain’s biggest charities, owns almost 80% of it, and the Weston family owns the rest. So most, but not all, of Fortnum’s profits go to charity.
UK Uncut claim that they have good reason to target Fortnum’s, though. In a press release today, they say that “Whittington Investments … have a 54% stake in Associated British Foods who produce Ryvita, Kingsmill and others and own Primark, and that “ABF have dodged over £40 million in tax.”
I’m still trying to track down the source of UK Uncut’s claims about ABF, but that’s the deal. Fortnum and Mason is owned by Wittington Investments, and UK Uncut says Wittington Investments is a tax dodger. Wittington is mostly, but not entirely, charitable.
Update | And there’s this. The Garfield Weston Foundation was found last year to have violated British charity law because it allowed Wittington Investments to make donations to non-charitable political organizations amounting to some £1.32 million. The donations, all to right-wing groups, included £900,000 in gifts to the Conservative Party.
studentactivism.net 
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