You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Student Government’ category.
Steven Oliver and Kendra Key met in the contest for the student government presidency at the University of Alabama this year.
More than fourteen thousand students, well over half the campus population, voted — the most in UA history. The race was close, with less than two percentage points separating the two candidates. But in the end Olvier, a white man, defeated Key, a black woman, by two hundred and sixty-one votes.
UA is the flagship campus of Alabama’s state university system, and it has never had a black student body president. In the fourteen years since its current student government was established, seventeen students of color have run for campus-wide office. All have lost.
Race is not the only factor in Alabama’s student government elections, of course. (The campus’s student body is more than eighty-five percent white, to start with, which means the majority of Key’s support came from white students.) Oliver ran with heavy support from fraternities and sororities, and the divide between greeks and independents played a major role in the campaign.
But the fact that UA’s student officers have been — and remain — all white has significant consequences for the student government, and the campus as a whole. UA’s student newspaper, the Crimson White, grapples with those consequences in two articles — here and here.
A vice president of the Binghamton University Student Association has been the target of racist taunts from members of her own student government twice in the last week.
Last Sunday night, according to witnesses, Binghamton SA Vice President for Finance Alice Liou, who is Asian-American, was arguing with Elahd Bar-Shai, a member of the university’s Student Assembly, in the Student Association offices. After she made a disparaging remark about his appearance, he said he was surprised she could “see anything with those squinty eyes.”
At a meeting of the Student Assembly the following night, Bar-Shai, who last semester sponsored an SA constitutional amendment to eliminate the student government’s Vice President of Multicultural Affairs position, stood for election as chair of the Assembly, winning in a 14-11 vote.
After that vote, several of Bar-Shai’s supporters left the meeting, causing the Assembly to lose quorum. An SA officer followed them out, attempting to convince them to return, and the group’s discussion got heated. Eventually Liou became involved, and Assembly representative Mike Lombardi, a supporter of Bar-Shai, told her to “go eat a dog.” (In one account, he told her to “shut up and go eat a fucking dog.”) At that point, Liou says, she called him a “white bastard,” and had to be restrained by friends.
Campus police were called to the Assembly meeting as a result of the disturbance, and the Binghamton administration is now investigating the incident, but no disciplinary action has yet been taken. Lombardi, who is the former business manager of the Binghamton Review, a conservative newspaper on campus, resigned from the Assembly on Wednesday.
A group calling itself “A Coalition of Angry Students” is planning a protest rally on campus this afternoon (Facebook Event page here). They are demanding that Bar-Shai and Lombardi “be suspended for a semester, stripped of their SA positions and sign written apologies” to Liou.
May 4 update: This post is still getting a lot of hits, and I’ll be following up as I get more information. In the meantime, if you attended the Saturday protest, or have other news to share, please leave a comment or send me an email.
May 5 update: The Student Assembly ousted Bar-Shai as its chair at a meeting last night.
The New School Free Press has published a full transcript of an interview it conducted with New School president Bob Kerrey last month. In it, Kerrey talks about how officials monitor Twitter during protests, says that someone getting “knocked to the ground” isn’t police brutality, and appears to promise that a student will be seated on the New School board of trustees before long.
Kerrey has been the subject of intense criticism from students and faculty alike during his tenure at the New School, and the NSFP interview took place just twelve days after a student occupation of a campus building that was aimed — in part — at forcing his resignation. That occupation, the second at the New School in the last six months, ended in nearly two dozen arrests.
Extended excerpts follow…
Education Not for Sale is a radical student network in the UK. I found out about them through their work in (and against) the National Union of Students, the British national student organization, which I’ll be writing more about soon, but for now, welcome them to the blogroll and check them out.
By the way, ENS has posted the only report I’ve seen so far on the April 18 National Student Co-ordination I mentioned the week before last, so you might want to check that out too.
The Arizona Students’ Association and the Associated Students of the University of Arizona have put up a powerful slideshow on the University of Arizona’s proposed tuition increase:
The idea behind the slideshow is simple: Let students speak directly to the increase would change their lives. Real students, real impact.
The statements speak to a wide variety of effects — “a third job,” “my little brother’s ability to come here,” “a plane ticket to visit my dad.” Each tells a personal story, and each gives that story a human face.
It’s a great, powerful statement. Go look.
And if you’re running an anti-tuition campaign of your own, maybe you should bring a camera and a whiteboard (or a pad and sharpie) to your next rally.
studentactivism.net 
Recent Comments