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Below are the lyrics to “Kim Il Sung,” a tribute to the North Korean dictator. The song was printed in the Weatherman Songbook in 1969, and was intended to be sung to the tune of “Maria” from West Side Story.
The most beautiful sound I ever heard
Kim Il Sung
The most beautiful sound in all the world
Kim Il Sung
Kim Il Sung, Kim Il Sung, Kim Il Sung
Kim Il Sung, Kim Il Sung, Kim Il Sung
Kim Il Sung
I’ve just met a Marxist-Leninist named Kim Il Sung
And suddenly his line
Seems so correct and fine
To me
Kim Il Sung
Say it soft and there’s rice fields flowing
Say it loud and there’s people’s war growing
Kim Il Sung
I’ll never stop saying Kim Il Sung
And surely now Korea
Will forever more be a
Socialist country
Korea
Say it sneaky and the Pueblo is taken
Say it bold and the imperialists are quakin’
Korea
I’ll never stop saying Korea
Students at Anderson University in Indiana aren’t allowed to drink. Not even off campus. Not even if they’re twenty-one. Not even if they’re twenty-one and off campus.
So the day before yesterday a few of them staged an act of civil disobedience.
About twenty-five students left morning chapel services on Tuesday and walked as a group to Kroakerheads, a bar about a mile from campus. (They arrived there at about 10:30, half an hour before Kroakerheads usually opens, but they’d called ahead and asked the staff to open early.)
They entered the bar. Some ordered beers, some ordered sodas, some didn’t order anything. All were in violation of Anderson student regulations, however — the rules bar not just drinking, but also being in the presence of others who are drinking.
The protest was staged by a student group called Students for a Democratic AU. One protest organizer, Caleb Fletcher, said it was not merely about the alcohol policy, but also “how the student body, as part of the institution, has been left out of policy decisions and the decision-making process.”
According to the Anderson student handbook, disciplinary sanctions for first-offenses relations to drinking include probation, medical evaluation, notification of parents, and “educational assignment/follow-up treatment.” Sanctions for second offenses include all of the above plus a fine and loss of privileges, with suspension or expulsion for third offenses.
An Anderson security employee observed and photographed the protest, and a university spokesman told the Associated Press that the university would follow its standard disciplinary process in dealing with the students who participated.
Anderson’s student government held a forum on the alcohol policies last night, and about two hundred of the university’s 2700 students attended. At the forum, Anderson’s president, James Edwards, defended the regulations, noting that they have been in place since the university opened in 1917.
Edwards did open the door a crack to a relaxing of the rules, saying that there may eventually be changes regarding “how the community and our expectations are enforced.” Others noted that other restrictions on social activities At Anderson have recently been lifted, including bans on playing cards and holding hands.
The university’s ban on dancing was lifted in 2007.
An interesting article from the Kansas City Star on what colleges tell (and don’t tell) families about students’ underage drinking violations.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) limits what universities can do with information about students, but it gives campuses broad discretion in some areas. The Star explores the question of what universities do, and should, tell students’ families when a student violates drinking rules.
The United States Supreme Court will hear arguments next month in the case of a 13-year-old eighth grader who was strip-searched in 2003 by school officials who were searching her for ibuprofen.
An appeals court ruled last year that the search violated Savana Redding’s constitutional rights, as well as “any known principle of human dignity,” but the ruling was a split decision. The Supreme Court will also be faced with the question of whether Redding has the right to sue the assistant principal who ordered the search.
Redding is now an undergraduate at Eastern Arizona College, majoring in psychology.
It’s been almost two weeks since the University of North Carolina became the twenty-first campus this year to break with Russell Athletic over labor violations. No other schools have dumped Russell since then, but the campaign against the apparel manufacturer is still going strong.
A few highlights of the last two weeks’ organizing:
- Activists at the University of Minnesota are building on their victory there — now that UM has axed Russell, they’re pressing for the university to join the Worker Rights Consortium’s Designated Suppliers Program.
- Villanova University’s athletics program has announced a temporary freeze in purchasing from Russell while they investigate the situation, and the campus newspaper published an editorial last Thursday calling on the university to break with Russell permanently.
- A member of Kansas University Students Against Sweatshops wrote an op-ed for the Daily Kansan urging KU to cut its Russell ties.
- The Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation held a Russell Athletics teach-in at the University of Southern California.
- Campus activists attended last Friday’s Associated Students UCLA meeting to press the case for dumping Russell.
Meanwhile, Russell Athletic is inviting the presidents of the colleges and universities that have cut their ties with the company to visit Honduras on an RA-hosted “fact-finding trip.”
March 20 Update: USAS is tweeting that the Montana State University Bozeman has become the 22nd campus to drop Russell in 2009. Also, there’s a major story on the campaign going out over the AP wire. Also, USAS reports that MSU-Bozeman and Santa Clara University have both dumped Russell. That makes 23 campuses.
May 1 Update: Boston College and the University of California make FIFTY-SEVEN campuses. Wow.
studentactivism.net 
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