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The activists who occupied the New School building at 65 Fifth Avenue early on Friday morning did not use Twitter to organize their action or to communicate with the world outside. No-one who self-identified as a participant in the occupation ever tweeted while it was going on, and the protesters seem not to have given much weight to Twitter as a medium through which they could communicate with the public.
But news of the protest broke online quickly, and by the time the occupation ended much of the conversation surrounding it was taking place on Twitter. Hundreds of tweets about the occupation were posted that morning — by noon, a new one was going up every eighteen seconds. Many of these tweets were written by eyewitnesses, and taken in aggregate the occupation’s Twitter feed offers both a real-time narrative of the morning’s events and a demonstration of the multiple ways that Twitter is deployed when news breaks.
The Occupation On Twitter
The occupation began at about 5:30 in the morning, by most accounts. The first tweet that mentioned it was posted at 6:46 am — twenty-six minutes after the activist group Take Back NYU announced the action via email to its Facebook group.
The first request that observers bring cameras to the occupation site to document events as they unfolded came at 7:26. The first photo from the scene was posted exactly forty minutes later.
Ongoing reports on the New School occupation can be found here.
So I was supposed to be posting the final installment of my series on the New School In Exile this week, but with another building occupation underway at the New School, that post is going on the back burner. I will, though, share a few thoughts along the lines of what I was going to post there.
As of this writing, at 10:00 am, there’s been no formal statement from the students occupying 65 Fifth Avenue. No statement of demands, no statement of principles. If New School In Exile is behind the occupation, they’re not taking credit.
Other voices are, however, rushing in to fill the void. The New School Free Press is liveblogging the event, and they’ve got several strong quotes up from New School president Bob Kerrey. The story is all over Twitter, and it’s beginning to hit the blogs.
New School In Exile lost momentum in March in large part because it failed to use social media to keep its supporters informed and engaged. Take Back NYU suffered during its February occupation because others provided a more compelling ongoing narrative of their action than they did.
Today’s New School occupiers have an opportunity to create a new dynamic.
I have no idea what kind of internet access the Fifth Avenue occupiers have, but if they have any at all, someone in the building should be broadcasting — on Twitter, on a blog, even by commenting at news sites.
And if you don’t have internet access inside, or you’re too busy with moment-to-moment issues to be blogging, get on the phone to a supporter with a computer, and have them do it for you.
Tell us who you are. Tell us what you’re doing. Tell us why you’re doing it. Tell us what you’re looking for. Start talking, and keep talking.
Get your story out.
11 am update: One of the occupiers is blogging.
July 2010 Update: A federal judge has ruled in EMU’s favor, upholding Julea Ward’s expulsion.
The story of Julea Ward, a former counseling student who is suing Eastern Michigan University over her expulsion from their graduate program, is burning up the right-wing blogosphere.
Conservative commenters on the case generally argue that Ward, a Christian, was removed from the program because she refused to “advocate for homosexual behavior” — or, as National Review‘s David French puts it, “vocally support same-sex sexual conduct.”
But Ward’s attorneys have posted various documents relating to her dismissal up online, and those documents tell a different story.
According to the LA Times, more and more community colleges, responding to contracting opportunities at four-year institutions and growth in international student enrollment, are building dorms. And though the Times doesn’t speculate, this development may in turn help foster student organizing at community colleges.
Anyone who has tried to organize students on a commuter campus knows how hard it can be to get things going and keep them going. The proportion of American college students living on campus is much lower now than it was a few decades ago, and this shift is one of the factors that has made student organizing more challenging. From that perspective, a movetoward dorms at community colleges may provide a boost for student activists at those campuses.
And the benefits of dorms to organizers go beyond the students who live in them. Dorms create a 24/7 community on campus, and make it easier to schedule events outside of peak class hours — if people know that students living in the dorms will be coming out for an event, they’ll be more likely to schlep to campus to attend.
Community college student organizing has been growing in recent years. Dorms may give it an additional push.
A group of students presented a University of Florida administrator with a petition Wednesday protesting the disproportionate impact of recent university layoffs on women and people of color.
According to the group, women represent 34% of full-time UF faculty, but 61% of those fired as a result of recent budget cuts. Among people of color, the figures were 25% and 54%, respectively.
Update: Here’s an article from the Gainesville Sun about other recent student organizing against UF budget cuts.
studentactivism.net 
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