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Student activists at New York City’s New School have reportedly launched another building occupation.
According to the activist group Take Back NYU, students from the New School have occupied “the entire building” at 65 Fifth Avenue. (65 Fifth is at 14th Street: map.)
The occupation looks very much like the work of The New School In Exile, As of 8 am, there’s been no news directly from the NSIE’s website or blog. More details as they become available, here and on our Twitter feed.
9 am: The New School Free Press is liveblogging the occupation. They say about 60 students entered the building at five o’clock this morning. Cops have cordoned off the sidewalk, and NS president Bob Kerrey says “this is an NYPD situation.” Kerrey claims students “broke and entered” the building, and assaulted a guard. A student inside said the group made a “peaceful entrance.”
9:30 am: News media are starting to cover the story (NY1, AP/Fox), but still no statement from the occupiers.
9:55 am: NY1 has a statement from student Andy Folk: “”Our demand for them to resign is consistent with the faculty’s ‘no confidence’ vote in Bob Kerrey. That demand was not met. Other demands were met, such as starting a socially-responsible investment committee, which Bob Kerrey is trying to bury in red tape. So, we need to show him by force and civil disobedience that students have a right over the school that they pay money for. This is just a demonstration of students taking back their space.”
10:00 am: New post up here.
10:08 am: Cable news channel NY1 is airing a lengthy live report from the scene of the occupation. They say cops have closed down some streets, cleared protesters from sidewalks. Report included video of masked occupiers on the roof of 65 Fifth Avenue waving black-and-red flags.
10:30 am: The New York Times and Gawker weigh in.
10:50 am: Blogpost up from the Village Voice, with photos. Says cops are blocking students from going to class. 13th Street shut down. “Massive police presence … helicopters whirring overhead.”
11:05 am: NY1 reports dozens of cops “preparing to go inside 65 Fifth Avenue.” Cops wearing helmets, shields, carrying plastic handcuffs.
11:20 am: http://reoccupied.wordpress.com/ claims to be blogging from inside occupation. Latest post says cops are storming the building, have used pepper spray and tear gas. Trying to get confirmation…
11:35 am: NY1 news reporting that police are inside the building and on the roof, and that “at least two” students have been removed. No mention of pepper spray or tear gas, no word on mass arrests.
11:45 am: Village Voice blog: “The cops have pulled paddy wagons between the press pen and the front of the building so the press can’t see any of the actual arrests.”
11:50 am: http://reoccupied.wordpress.com/: “Rally NOW at 6th Precinct! Let’s get them free!!! 233 w10th st at Bleecker. NOW NOW NOW Until every last one is out!”
12:05 pm: NY1 reporting that NYPD entered 65 Fifth Ave at 11:15, and cleared the building by noon. Nineteen arrests — fifteen men, four women.
12:30 pm: The New School has released a statement to the media on this morning’s occupation. That statement, and subsequent developments, will be covered in this follow-up post.
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.
A former student has filed a lawsuit against Eastern Michigan University claiming that she was dismissed from a graduate program in counseling for refusing to “affirm or validate homosexual behavior within the context of a counseling relationship.”
At the start of this year, when she was nearing the end of her coursework at EMU, Julea Ward was engaged in a Counseling Practicum. Ward has religious objections to homosexuality, and when she discovered that one of her assigned clients was gay, she asked her professor whether she should see the client or have him reassigned. That question, she contends, set in motion a chain of events that ultimately led to disciplinary proceedings and her removal from the program.
The university has declined to comment publicly on the case, but in a March 12 letter the chair of her disciplinary committee said that Ward had “by clear and convincing evidence” violated ethical standards requiring that counselors “avoid imposing values that are inconsistent with counseling goals” or engage in discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
A copy of Ward’s complaint, with various documents relating to the disciplinary charges, can be found in PDF form here.
Update: We analyze Ward’s suit and the conservative blogosphere’s response.
studentactivism.net 
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