You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Governance’ category.
So last night, in the final question of the final debate, the presidential candidates finally got around to discussing education. A full debate transcript is available here, and I’ve cut-and-pasted the higher education portions of their answers behind the cut.
Via Bitch PhD and Inside Higher Ed comes word of new directives on political speech sent out by the ethics office of the University of Illinois system to all university employees.
According to the directives, university employees are not permitted to engage in the following activities “while working, when on University property, while using University resources … or when acting as a representative of the University”:
- Preparing for or participating in any rally or event related to a specific political candidate, party, or referendum – this includes preparation and circulation of campaign materials, petitions, or literature
- Soliciting contributions or votes on behalf of a particular political party or candidate
- Assisting at the polls on behalf of any political party, candidate, or organization
- Surveying or conducting an opinion poll related to anticipating an election outcome, or participating in a recount challenge related to an electionoutcome
- Running for political office
The message goes on to say that wearing pins or t-shirts that support specific candidates or parties, “distributing, producing, or posting flyers or other campaign literature on campus,” conducting voter registration work that is identified with a particular candidate, displaying partisan bumper sticker’s on one’s car, and attending on-campus political rallies, even on one’s own time, are all prohibited activities.
Discussion of these regulations has so far focused on their effect on faculty free speech, but they are explicitly identified as applying to all university employees, including professional and non-professional staff. On their face, the rules would appear to apply to student employees of the university as well — did the university really mean to suggest that if you work as an RA or in a dining hall or staffing the check-out desk in the library a few hours a week, you’re not allowed to wear an Obama pin to class or attend a rally for a local candidate?
We’ll be following this story.
Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper has outed Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s chief speechwriter as a former “radical student activist.”
According to the Daily Mail‘s report, speechwriter Kirsty McNeill, 28, was the president of the Oxford Student Union during her undergraduate days, “devoting herself to leading sit-ins and mass protests” against Tony Blair, Mr. Brown’s immediate predecessor as head of the Labor party.
She was, the paper said, a protest organizer for the “Campaign For Free Education – an alliance of hard-Left causes that united in opposition to tuition fees” at Britain’s universities.
An interesting background piece from the First Amendment Center on the organizational relationship between student newspapers and campus administrators. The piece gives particular attention to the trend toward student papers organizing themselves as non-profit corporations independent of the universitites they cover.
The nuts-and-bolts assistance programs that student governments run for the students they serve may not be the most exciting aspect of campus activism, but they are activist endeavors. They represent students working for students to advance a student-centered agenda, independent of the priorities of the university administration.
Stories like this one are small stories, in other words, but important stories.
studentactivism.net 
Recent Comments