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When the student union at the University of Florida was built in 1967, students requested that it be named in honor of outgoing university president J. Wayne Reitz. Today, students are fighting over whether that name should stand.
As UF president, Reitz participated in a purge of gay faculty and students that involved the firing and expulsion of dozens of people. During his administration, the university also failed to integrate until placed under court order, and then only haltingly, and in 1967 a popular professor was denied tenure because of his political views.
Student activists at UF want the union building renamed for Virgil Hawkins, a local black scholar who fought a ten-year battle to integrate the UF school of law in the 1940s and 50s, but the attempt has run into resistance from the campus student government.
Student of color and LGBT groups on campus have held several demonstrations around the issue, with tensions rising after a popular law professor’s car was vandalized with the word “faggot” in mid-September.
Activists collected five hundred signatures in recent months in favor of a non-binding campus referendum on the name change, but student government officials have attempted to block it twice — first by claiming that the signatures were improperly obtained, and then, when that challenge was rejected, by objecting to the wording of the referendum question. Critics of the student government say the body is being improperly influenced by the Reitz family, who remain major donors to the university.
In a late September ruling the student government court stripped the contested language from the question, but allowed the referendum to be placed before the students, with the referendum expected later this month.
Last weekend some forty Wesleyan students entered a closed meeting of the university’s Board of Trustees, looking to give input on a matter of university governance. The students were advocates of need-blind admissions, a policy under which students are accepted for admission without consideration of their ability to pay. (Admissions have traditionally been need-blind at Wesleyan, but at the start of the summer, after many students had left campus, the trustees voted to scrap that policy for the class of 2017.)
This wasn’t a long occupation — it lasted only about fifteen minutes before students left voluntarily. It wasn’t particularly aggressive — video of the incident shows a conspicuously quiet, and respectful, discussion. And it was far from unprecedented — on the video, one trustee is seen declaring that “students barging in [to trustee meetings] is a long and time-honored tradition at Wesleyan.”
But now at least five of the students who participated in the action are being brought up on campus judicial charges. As the campus online newspaper Wesleying notes, the five stand accused of “disruption” and “failure to comply.” According to the campus student handbook, it looks like punishment for these two violations could be anything from a warning to expulsion.
I watched the video, and I gotta say — that’s some seriously non-disruptive disruption, and some seriously compliant non-compliance. Shame on Wesleyan for making it into a judicial issue.
I’m going back to writing about student stuff after this, I promise. Thanks for your patience.
• • •
On Twitter last night, my buddy Malcolm Harris declared that
“The abortion rights argument for Obama is such a big red herring.”
He went on to say that Roe v. Wade is showing no signs of getting overturned in the Supreme Court, and that Obama isn’t doing anything to expand on-the-ground access to abortion in states where there are few providers.
I pretty much agree with Malcolm’s follow-up tweets. The Republicans have had plenty of chances to put together a Supreme Court majority against Roe, and their continuing failure to do so has long looked more like a decision than a fumble to me. And no, Obama hasn’t been anywhere near as aggressive in expanding abortion access as I’d like.
But reproductive freedom is one of those areas where presidents get to make a million small decisions, many of them invisible to the average voter, and those decisions add up to a lot. Let’s review Obama’s record.
- In 2009 the president rescinded the Mexico City Policy, which restricted US government funding to overseas NGOs which provided abortion services. A 2011 Yale study found that the policy had had a devastating effect on access to reproductive health services in poor countries.
- The administration has acted aggressively to punish states which have attempted to cut off Medicaid funding to abortion providers, and those which have attempted to eliminate Medicaid funding for abortion in pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.
- Obama supports expanding abortion access for women in the military under the Shaheen Amendment, which was blocked by House Republicans this summer.
- The Obama HHS ended a grant to a Catholic organization working against human trafficking because of the group’s refusal to provide women with abortion referrals, directing the money to groups that would do so.
- And although Roe is unlikely to be overturned, that doesn’t mean that new legislative or judicial restrictions on abortion are impossible. In 2003 Congress passed (and George W. Bush signed) the Partial Birth Abortion Act, and in 2007 the Supreme Court upheld it as constitutional. A second Obama term means a likely veto of similar legislation and likely confirmation of new Supreme Court justices who would vote to strike it down.
And of course reproductive freedom isn’t just about abortion. Around access to contraception, the Obama administration has also done good in all sorts of ways.
- The administration rolled back a Bush-era expansion of the so-called “conscience clause,” which granted federal protection to healthcare providers who refused to supply women with birth control and family planning assistance.
- Obamacare famously imposes new requirements that private insurance plans cover contraception.
- Obama has cut funding for abstinence-only sex education programs by two thirds.
- The Obama Department of Defense issued an order in 2010 mandating that all military healthcare facilities worldwide carry Plan B.
- The Obama FDA approved Ella, a “morning-after” pill with a five-day window of effectiveness.
- Obama supports, and has protected, federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Romney opposes it.
Now, Obama’s record on reproductive rights is far from perfect. There’s a lot more he could be doing, even given congressional Republicans’ opposition. But to say that it makes no difference to abortion rights whether he wins in November or not is just false. It’s just not supportable.
This is what I was getting at in my post office post last week. The deeper you dig into the specifics of policy, the more the differences between the players reveal themselves. They may not be huge differences, and they may not reflect the kinds of dramatic contrasts some of us would like to see being drawn, but they’re there. They matter. They have a real impact on real people’s lives, and a disproportionately powerful impact on the lives of those with the fewest resources.
There are some victories that I doubt we can win through electoral organizing. There are some ways — some excruciating ways — in which Obama and Romney are essentially identical. I don’t condemn anyone who refuses to participate in electoral politics — there’s plenty of vital work to be done outside the political system, and there are lots of crucial struggles that can’t be waged inside it.
But the decision to opt out can’t be made on the basis of the false premise that nothing of consequence will be lost if Mitt Romney wins this election. Make the strategic argument that the gains aren’t worth the price, if you like. Hell, make the argument that Obama is in some ways more dangerous. I can respect that.
But that cost-benefit analysis isn’t legitimate unless you also tally up the costs.
Yesterday I reported that the English department at Queensborough Community College had voted to reject an administration-initiated restructuring of their composition program, and that the college’s Vice President for Academic Affairs had in response informed them that the department will be largely dismantled next fall.
According to the letter, which I have since posted on this site, CUNY intends to eliminate the composition program at QCC, dismiss all Queensborough English department adjuncts, and immediately cancel all job searches in the department. The administration has threatened to terminate full-time faculty left idle as a result of the downsizing, a move that by my estimate could lead to the firing of as many as nineteen of the department’s twenty-six full-timers. Some 175 composition sections per semester would be pushed off campus by the move, threatening local students’ ability to advance in their studies and overburdening resources at surrounding colleges.
That’s the situation as I understood it yesterday evening. I have since received further information about the crisis that confirms all of the above information and allows me to provide a fuller accounting of the events of last week.
The Queensborough dispute arose, as I noted yesterday, out of the Pathways initiative, a CUNY-wide administrative attempt to systematize and centralize course offerings throughout the system. Faculty throughout CUNY have argued that Pathways is insufficiently responsive to local campus conditions and students’ needs, but the administration has continued to push forward with the plan on an aggressive timetable.
At Queensborough’s English department the primary practical issue with Pathways was its reduction of weekly course hours for composition classes from four to three. This change would cut into students’ class time, require heavier faculty courseloads and — not incidentally — dramatically reduce faculty compensation for teaching composition, a particularly writing (and grading) intensive class.
The shift from the department’s existing four-hour composition courses to new Pathways-compliant three-hour offerings required a departmental vote, and as it became clear that faculty were disinclined to approve the change, administrators made it known that a failure to approve the Pathways plan would result in harsh consequences.
Faculty were alarmed by these threats. They delayed the vote by a week, and asked that an administrator appear at their next meeting to state CUNY’s case in person. Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs Karen Steele represented the administration at Wednesday’s meeting, and according to the faculty member I spoke with, made the threat to the department’s offerings explicit prior to the vote.
When the vote was eventually held — conducted by secret ballot as a result of faculty fears of individual retaliation — the department rejected the administration proposal by a margin of 14 to 6, with one abstention.
In an email the following afternoon, Vice President Steele carried out the administration’s earlier threats. As of fall 2013, she said, all QCC composition courses will be eliminated, with students forced to enroll at other CUNY campuses to meet those requirements. Because composition makes up the great majority of the QCC English department’s course offerings, moreover, all of the department’s faculty searches are to be “immediately” cancelled, all of its adjuncts are to be terminated, and all current full-time appointments, including those of tenured faculty, are to be reviewed on the basis of “ability to pay and Fall ’13 enrollment in department courses.”
By my estimate, QCC’s plan will have the effect of eliminating all part-time faculty and approximately 19 out of the department’s current 26 full-time faculty positions, while shifting nearly two hundred composition sections a semester to other CUNY campuses.
The current situation, in short — and it should be remembered that Steele has presented this as a done deal — represents an effective dismantling of QCC’s English department. The Professional Staff Congress, CUNY’s faculty union, has declared its intention to file a labor grievance in response, and is threatening a federal lawsuit. Faculty have expressed concern that the move could threaten Queensborough’s accreditation.
There’s a reason I was initially skeptical about the accuracy of the early reports I received, and a reason that others have been incredulous — this is a stunningly crude act of retaliation against a department for exercising its legitimate prerogatives in college governance.
Another meeting has been scheduled for this Wednesday. Faculty are adamant that they will not reverse their decision, and confident that they have the vote strength to hold firm.
That is not to say they aren’t worried. They’re scared to death. But they believe that this is a fight that they can and must win.
Sarah Jaffe has a great new piece up dismantling a bunch of complaints about the Chicago teachers’ union and their strike. The whole thing is well worth reading, but I wanted to piggyback on one particular bit.
Jaffe quotes Times columnist Joe Nocera’s claim that “the status quo, which is what the Chicago teachers want, is clearly unacceptable,” and responds with this:
“Here’s a deep-seated bit of ideology that’s really worth unpacking for a second. This is the image of unions in the American psyche these days. Most people think of them as little-c conservative institutions holding on to a dead past, trying to protect what their members have against a sweeping tide of change.
“It’s wrong, and the CTU couldn’t be a better example of just how wrong it is. Karen Lewis and her union are the ones actually fighting for reforms in the schools, starting with things we know work: smaller class sizes, well-rounded curriculum, support for teachers and school staff. They might legally only be allowed to strike over salary and benefits, but they’ve been out there at every turn arguing for change, not the status quo.”
The problem is obvious, and it’s symptomatic of the biggest problem in debates over American public education (primary, secondary, and higher) more generally right now: The most sensible proposals for reforming public education have been written out of “reasonable” public discourse.
In short, Nocera believes that CTU is fighting for the status quo because their proposals have been rendered invisible.
Just seven months ago, CTU released a comprehensive report on how Chicago’s public schools could be improved. It’s thoughtful, ambitious work, and it turns out that the pricetag on the union’s whole better-schools wishlist amounts to just 15% of the system’s annual budget. That money would buy improvements in everything from facilities to art and music instruction to school lunches, while increasing teacher pay, implementing universal pre-K and full-day kindergarten and dramatically expanding school libraries in the parts of the city that need them most.
If that’s what you get for $713 million, you could get big chunks of it for a lot less, and it’s not like the current impasse is free — not for the city, and not for the city’s taxpayers.
So why aren’t we talking about any of this? For the same reason we’re not talking about cutting tuition at public colleges, or increasing in-state enrollment, or hiring more full-time faculty. Because the dominant narrative of austerity, not the country’s actual financial situation, is driving public discourse.
And that narrative has no room for hope. Or change.
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