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The post below is from Thursday morning, before the walkout began. For reports from the walkout itself, go here, and for a campus-by-campus wrapup of the day’s events, go here.
Students, faculty, and staff at all ten campuses of the University of California will be walking out today in protest of rising fees, pay cuts, enrollment restrictions, and the defunding of the UC system. This post provides an overview of what’s going on at each University of California campus today.
I’ll be updating as the day progresses, and I encourage visitors to add additional info in comments. Follow the @studentactivism Twitter feed and the #UCwalkout Twitter hashtag for real-time updates. (Update: Lots of tweets on the walkout aren’t using the hashtag, so search uc walkout for a fuller picture.)
The statewide walkout is scheduled for noon, with each campus holding a rally at that time. Other events will be taking place before and after. The University Professional and Technical Employees union has called a one-day strike in coordination with the walkout, and will be mounting picket lines on the various campuses over the course of the day.
Berkeley
A teach-in on the walkout was held yesterday evening, and half a dozen “teach-outs” on various topics are scheduled for this morning. A noon rally is planned for Upper Sproul Plaza, and there will be a General Assembly at Sproul Plaza at 6 pm.
More info:
- Your Guide to the Walkout Festivities, from the Daily Californian’s Daily Clog.
- The Facebook page for the Berkeley walkout.
- The website of the Berkeley Alliance Against the Cuts.
Davis
Participants in the UC Davis walkout are encouraged to join the campus picket lines at any time during the day. There will be a noon rally on the campus quad.
More info:
- A walkout factsheet from the UC Davis Graduate Student Association.
- The Facebook page for the Davis walkout.
Irvine
There will be an “interactive drama” in the Arts Plaza from 9 to 10 am, and teach-ins throughout the morning. The noon rally will take place at the flagpoles, and there will be another rally from 2 to 3 pm in the Social Science Plaza. From 5 to 7 pm there will be more teach-ins at Humanities Gateway 1010.
More info:
- A list of the day’s scheduled activities from a KUCI blog.
UCLA
Rally set-up at Bruin Plaza begins at 10:30, with a graduate student picnic at Meyerhoff Park at 11 am. The noon rally will begin at Bruin Plaza, and will march to Murphy Hall at 1 pm or a little later. From there, the marchers will head to Ronald Reagan Medical. There will be additional picketing and leafleting at UCLA Freud Theater from 6 to 8 pm.
More info:
- A list of events from the Saving UCLA blog. (login required)
Merced
There will be petitioning throughout campus, and tabling in front of the Koiligian Library from 10 am to 3 pm.
More info:
- The Facebook page for the Merced walkout and teach-in.
Riverside
There will be a teach-in at the corner of Canyon Crest and University Drive from 10 am to 3 pm. Events will include speakers, hip-hop theater, and rallies.
More info:
- A page on the UCR walkout from a student blog.
San Diego
There was a teach-in last night, and there will be another at the Pepper Canyon Building courtyard at 12:30 pm today.
More info:
- The Facebook page of the UCSD walkout.
- Saving UCSD website.
San Francisco
I haven’t found any online sources for information on the UCSF walkout yet.
Santa Barbara
There will be a variety of events going on all day, including tabling at the Davidson Library and an “open art studio” with lectures and hands-on workshops at Building 434. The rally at the Arbor (in front of the library’s main entrance) will begin with poems and songs at 11:30, and will continue with speakers from noon until 1 pm.
UCSB is also planning a teach-in on October 14 from 3 pm to midnight.
More info:
- Schedule of events from Saving UCSB
Santa Cruz
A friend writes that there will be a rally at noon, a general assembly at 3 pm, and picketing until 8 pm. Locations coming…
More info:
- News story on UCSC walkout plans.
Students, faculty and staff of the University of California, facing an unprecedented assault on their system’s funding, will be walking out of classes tomorrow, September 24. I’ll be posting more about the walkout soon, and updating during the day tomorrow, but here’s a quick intro:
Last fall’s economic collapse hit American higher education hard, and as the new academic year gets underway its effects are being felt all over the country, but the California budget crisis is in a class by itself.
California’s initiative system, and a state law that bars the legislature from raising taxes without a two-thirds vote, make it almost impossible to fund ordinary expenses in a recession. The state is in a financial free-fall, and political leaders are looking to higher education for revenue.
In the face of this assault, top administrators at the University of California are rolling over.
Last week, UC official released a proposal that would increase the cost of attendance by 15% for the winter term and another 15% in the spring — coming on top of a 9.3% increase approved in May, this would bring in-state fees to more than $11,000 a year.
As UC Berkeley’s student government president has said, “not even during the depression of the 1930’s did student fees rise as suddenly and as much as they are now proposed to rise.” And the attack on higher education isn’t limited to fee increases. California politicians and UC administrators are laying off faculty and staff and cutting employees’ pay while reducing enrollment and increasing class sizes.
Tomorrow’s walkout began as a faculty initiative, and more than a thousand UC professors have signed on, but the protest has been picking up steam among students and non-teaching staff as well. The statewide University of California Student Association has unanimously passed a resolution of support for the walkout, there are two student websites up spreading the word, and folks are sharing news via the #UCWalkout hashtag on Twitter as well.
More to come…
I came across a blogpost this morning (via @HappyFeminist‘s Twitter feed) that asked what struck me as an interesting question, and I’d like to take a swing at answering it:
How do you teach feminism if you are not a feminist?
To answer this question, it seems to me, the first thing you need to do is to define your terms. If by “teaching feminism” you mean teaching about feminism as a movement, then you teach feminism the same way you teach Marxism, or existentialism, or surrealism — with as full and as sympathetic an understanding of the movement (and of its critics) as you can muster. If you’re going to talk about feminism in the classroom, you have an obligation to learn enough about it to talk about it intelligently, and that’s an obligation you have whether you’re a feminist or not.
In her post, Ashley says some teachers don’t teach feminism because they think they don’t know enough about it, or because they haven’t thought about teaching it, or because they don’t have time. She’s right, but those objections shift the topic a bit — from how you teach feminism to when.
So when should you teach feminism? When it’s part of the story you’re trying to tell, and when it’s part of the toolkit you’re trying to help your students assemble. More broadly, you teach about gender when it’s relevant … and when you’re talking about people, gender is almost always relevant.
You don’t need to “teach feminism” to talk about gender, of course, and you don’t need to teach from a feminist perspective to talk about gender. You do, though, need to have an understanding of how gender works. You need to have an analysis of gender, a perspective on gender. (More to the point, you need to have a considered perspective on gender, because by the time you can talk you have a perspective on gender, whether you realize it or not.) You need to know how you’re going to come at gender issues when they arise, you need to know why you’re taking the approach you’ve chosen, and you need to know how you’re going to work productively with students who are coming from a different perspective.
And of course that last paragraph applies as much to activists as it does to teachers.
The fall semester began this morning — one week late — at Michigan’s Oakland University.
Yesterday a judge ordered OU faculty and administrators to begin round-the-clock negotiations to end the university’s week-old strike, an this morning at 3:30 am the two sides reached a deal.
The agreement will have to be put to a vote of the faculty, and that vote may not happen until next month, but in the meantime faculty and students are heading back to the classroom.
As of 11:30 pm on Monday, talks to resolve America’s first faculty strike of the 2008-09 academic year were still ongoing.
Michigan’s Oakland University, which had been scheduled to begin the fall semester last Thursday, has yet to start classes because of a strike by the local chapter of the AAUP. The two sides are said to be close to a deal, however, and a message on the OU website encourages students to check back in the early morning to learn whether classes will be held on Tuesday.
Tuesday morning update: Oakland University faculty and administrators suspended strike negotiations at 4:30 this morning, after overnight talks failed to produce an agreement. The two sides are scheduled to come to the table again early this afternoon, but this morning OU announced that it would be seeking a court order to force faculty back to work.
Tuesday evening update: Representatives of OU’s faculty and administration are meeting in court tomorrow morning for hearing’s on the university’s claim that the Oakland strike is illegal. Classes for Wednesday have been officially cancelled.
Thursday morning update: Classes are back in session after the two sides reached a tentative deal last night.
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