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This story is the best short introduction I’ve yet seen to the “New Badger Partnership” — University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin’s proposal to split Madison, the UW flagship, off from the rest of the University of Wisconsin system.
Martin’s plan, negotiated in secret with Wisconsin’s new union-busting governor Scott Walker, would lop $125 million off of UW Madison’s budget, but give it far more operational flexibility on issues ranging from how to spend state money to how much to charge for tuition. The plan, opponents say, is a recipe for privatization of one of the nation’s great public universities.
The plan needs to be approved by the Wisconsin state legislature, and the prospects of that seem have dimmed recently — battles over the state budget and collective bargaining have battered the governor’s standing in the state, and it’s not clear that his party has the stomach for another big fight. Opposition to the plan from the university’s system-wide board of regents is a further barrier to its adoption.
But even if the plan is dropped from the current budget, it’s sure to return in the future, and its prospects are being watched closely by higher education advocates and analysts all over the country. At a time when the principles that have governed public higher education in the United States for generations are increasingly under fire, the fate of the University of Wisconsin is sure to have implications from New York to California and beyond.
Students who oppose the New Badger Partnership will be holding a mock auction of Bascom Hall, the UW Madison administration building, this afternoon, with more actions planned for the rest of the week. I’ll be following the story here, so keep checking back.
Is student lending a speculative bubble? Is higher education a scam now? Malcolm Harris makes the case. The whole thing — a cogent, thorough analysis — is well worth reading, but here’s the money quote:
If tuition has increased astronomically and the portion of money spent on instruction and student services has fallen, if the (at very least comparative) market value of a degree has dipped and most students can no longer afford to enjoy college as a period of intellectual adventure, then at least one more thing is clear: higher education, for-profit or not, has increasingly become a scam.
Seriously. Go read.
Dharun Ravi, the Rutgers student who bragged on Twitter about broadcasting his dorm roommate’s gay hookup on the internet, was indicted on fifteen charges (PDF) earlier today.
Ravi’s roommate, Tyler Clementi — a first-year student just weeks into his first semester at Rutgers when the spying occurred — committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge just days after it began.
The first eight counts of the indictment allege that Ravi recorded Clementi and his partner on one occasion, shared that recording with at least one other person, and attempted to do so again later. They further allege that the spying was either “an attempt to intimidate … because of sexual orientation” or was “reasonably believed” to be so.
Additional counts in the indictment allege that Ravi tampered with evidence in the case by deleting a tweet from Twitter, posting a false tweet, and deleting text messages that he sent to witnesses. It also claims that he interfered with a witness and lied to law enforcement.
According to the New York Daily News, Ravi faces a possible five years in prison if convicted of all charges.
I’ve got to say I’m a bit surprised by this indictment. I’ll have more thoughts later.
Three days after police broke up an administration building occupation at Sacramento State, students at another CSU campus have launched their own sit-in.
Some twenty students at Cal State Fullerton began the sit-in last night at around nine o’clock, and they were joined by students from CSU Dominguez Hills later that evening. A newspaper report early this morning said that a group of UCLA CSU Los Angeles students were expected to join the protest today.
The action began after Fullerton’s president, Milton Gordon, refused to sign a student statement in support of public higher education or join with them in drafting an alternative statement for joint release.
Update | Either I misread that news report linked above or they’ve changed it, but it’s CSU Los Angeles students, not UCLA students, who have joined the occupation.
Second Update | Fullerton students are using the #reclaimCSU hashtag on Twitter. This is apparently the statement that CSUF’s president refused to sign.
Wednesday Update | The occupation is still ongoing … and they’ve got a blog!
Often student activists are criticized for not proposing concrete solutions to the problems that others have identified. “Sure, you’re against our plan,” administrators and politicians ask, “but what alternative can you offer?”
Sometimes the “problem” is invented, of course, and sometimes students have detailed proposals at the ready, but not always. When the problem is real and students are offering no solution of their own, “what do you suggest we do?” is a legitimate question.
It’s a legitimate question. But “not this” is a legitimate answer.
Consider Mario Savio’s speech to the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964 — probably the most famous speech ever given by an American student activist:
There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious — makes you so sick at heart — that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.
Faced with a university that was breaking his heart, Savio said “no.” He said “stop.” He didn’t say “here’s an alternative.” He said “not this.”
Sometimes students, organizing against an act or a decision or a proposal or an administration, have an alternative at hand. Sometimes they have a suggestion as to what should happen next, what should take the place of the current plan or the status quo. Sometimes they have many such suggestions.
But sometimes they don’t. Sometimes what they have is “not this.” Sometimes what they have is “no.” Sometimes what they have is “stop.”
And sometimes that “stop” is the most radical, most cogent, most effective, most reasonable intervention there is.
studentactivism.net 
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