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Here’s the latest on the strike at Toronto’s York University, which has largely shuttered the campus since November 6:
The striking union rejected the university’s latest offer last night, and negotiations are set to resume today. Some university community members have called on the Ontario legislature to force the strikers back to work, but the legislature is currently in recess, and will be for another month.
And here are some local resources on the strike:
A student blog that describes itself as “a neutral atmosphere for discussions about the strike.”
The website and facebook group of a group calling for binding arbitration to resolve the dispute — a position the university endorses and the union opposes.
The official websites of York University and the striking union local, and the union’s strike blog.
To keep tabs on our ongoing coverage of the York strike, check out our Labor category archives, or just bookmark our main page.
For two months, a strike by Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3903 has shut down Toronto’s York University.
The strike, by teaching assistants and other employees, has left the university’s 50,000 students unable to return to class, and some of them are beginning to take matters into their own hands:
- On Sunday, a group of several dozen students launched a sit-in outside the university president’s office, demanding that he hold a public forum to answer students’ questions about the strike. (The sit-in is a continuation of a four-day protest that was held before the Christmas break.)
- On Tuesday, the university’s student government presented administrators and union officials with a 4000-signature petition urging both sides to reach an agreement that addresses students’ needs.
- Today, the student government is holding a board meeting to discuss the creation of an emergency relief fund to provide financial assistance to students experiencing hardship as a result of the strike.
After weeks away from the table, university and union officials began negotiating over the weekend. Talks continue, but there has been no breakthrough so far.
January 11 Update: If you arrived at this post directly from a search, click through to (or bookmark) the blog’s main page to see all posts on this subject.
In an effort to cut costs without reducing programs, colleges around the nation are cutting back to four-day class schedules.
Plans for four-day weeks have been announced at colleges in New York, Missouri, Georgia, and other states. The idea is even being considered at a few high schools.
The shift is expected to reduce heating and maintenance costs, and reduce commuting expenses for students, faculty, and staff.
On colleges with large on-campus student populations, a four-day week could make it easier to schedule student events and meetings. On commuter campuses, it could have the reverse effect.
In the next few weeks, I’m going to be cleaning out my bookmark folders from 2008 and passing along some of the news and links that I didn’t get around to posting last year. Starting with this…
Back in December, I mentioned an organization called Choose Responsibility in passing, calling it “a drinking-age reform group that arose out of college administrators’ frustration with the status quo.”
In August, Choose Responsibility unveiled a statement on the drinking age that declared that “Twenty-one is not working.” The statement was signed by more than a hundred college and university presidents, a list that at this writing has grown to 134.
See the full text of the statement after the jump, or click through to The Amethyst Initiative to learn more.
The organization that administers the SATs has announced that going forward students who take the test multiple times will be allowed to send whichever result they choose to colleges, rather than sending all results along as they do now.
The College Board says this new system “allows students to put their best foot forward,” but others are opposed.
To begin with, they say, the “Score Choice program” advantages those students who can afford to take the tests multiple times, allowing them to cherry-pick scores without informing colleges that they are doing so. It also increases the importance of test-prep services to the college admissions process, and enriches the College Board itself by encouraging students to take the test more often.
Further complicating the situation, colleges are not bound to accept the Score Choice program, and some institutions — including Cornell, Penn, Stanford, and USC — have announced that they will continue to require students to submit all their SAT scores as part of their admissions package.
The College Board implemented Score Choice once before, in 1993, but abandoned it in 2002, concluding that it was unfair to low-income students and students of color. But today, as the New York Times puts it, the organization “sees things differently.”
For those interested in more data on this subject, one blog critical of Score Choice has linked to a 2002 study that found a significant skew in the family income of repeat SAT-takers.
studentactivism.net 
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