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We have received word from a commenter that there have been arrests in the UNC anti-sweatshop sit-ins. The UPI reports that five students were arrested today after they moved their protest from the building’s rotunda to the chancellor’s office.
Neither source provides details on the charges filed. As of 5:30 pm Eastern time the UNC sit-in blog had not been updated with news of the arrests.
Update: Minutes after the above was posted, the sit-in blog was updated with a detailed report on this morning’s events.
May 5 Update: The link I provided earlier has been taken down, but a fuller report and other materials have been posted. Check the sit-in blog’s main page for updates.
The anti-sweatshop sit-in at the University of North Carolina is now in day 16. Here’s what’s happened since our last update:
• UNC chancellor James Moeser traveled to Washington DC for a State Department conference on education and global development, and United Students Against Sweatshops made sure the jaunt was no vacation. A group of DC-area activists held a demonstration as delegates arrived at the conference, chanting and leafleting as Moeser walked in.
• Wireless internet access to the building the demonstrators are occupying mysteriously went down about a week ago. A unversity IT person checked on the network a few days ago, and claimed he could find nothing wrong. For now, the folks sitting in are sharing a single ethernet connection.
• In the early days of the sit-in, UNC administration took a relaxed attitude toward the demonstrators hanging signs inside and outside the building. In the wake of an Obama rally on campus, and with commencement fast approaching, that lenience may be ending.
• The sit-in has spread to Second Life.
The 31 protesters arrested in the Penn State admin building sit-in earlier this month will be charged with “defiant criminal trespass,” police announced Friday. The charge is a third-degree misdemeanor, and carries a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a $2,500 fine.
Penn State United Students Against Sweatshops plans a rally for the arrested students at 2 pm this Thursday, May 1.
An online petition in support of the students and contact information for the president of PSU can be found here.
The Columbia University takeover of 1968 began forty years ago this week. The anniversary has been commemorated in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as on Democracy Now.
Two years ago an undergrad at the University of Portland, a private Catholic college, asked a male friend to walk her back to her dorm after a party. He claims they had consensual sex when they got there. She says he raped her.
Some time later, she reported the incident to the campus police, but the university brought no charges against the alleged assailant. When she criticized them and asked why no action had been taken, she received a letter from the university’s judicial coordinator that read as follows:
Based upon my findings in my investigation, I am unable to determine if a sexual assault occurred. I have reason to believe that intercourse occurred, but both parties admit to drinking and therefore, consent—or lack of consent—is difficult to determine. Given these facts, there are possible violations for which you could be charged.
Students at the university are now pressing for new campus judiciary policies to ensure that students who come forward with charges of sexual assault are not themselves targeted by campus judiciary authorities. “The school owes it to the students to do everything they can to make sure rapes are reported,” says junior Devon Goss.
The university reported no instances of sexual assault for the year in which the incident took place, although the federal Violence Against Women Act requires that campuses disclose all such allegations, no matter what their disposition.
(Via Feministing.)
studentactivism.net 
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