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The Brecht Forum in New York is hosting a panel tomorrow afternoon called “Whose Schools/Our Schools: A Strategic Round Table on the NYC Student Movement.”

The forum will be held tomorrow at 4 pm in the West Village, and will feature student activists from CUNY, NYU, and the New School.

Here’s the description and panel lineup, via The Young Vote:

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“I think he’s underestimating us a lot and that we’re going to show him in the next couple weeks that we can really turn on the fire.”

–University of Vermont student activist and Students Stand Up member Cecile Reuge, on UVM president Dan Fogel.

10:20 pm: Students at the University of Vermont (UVM) are sitting in at the university president’s office, protesting budget cuts. Some arrests were made earlier today, more possible at any time.

I’m still getting up to speed with this story, and following it primarily on Twitter. Check out the @studentactivism feed for updates.

10:50 pm update: Multiple reports on Twitter suggest mass arrests going on at the sit-in. I’m not going to try to cover this minute-by-minute, since info is so sketchy right now. I’ll post again tonight if I get anything major and unambiguous, though, and I’ll have a full write-up in the morning.

Midnight update: The building has been cleared, with about 30 students arrested. One report says all but one were processed and released. Hundreds of students were outside the building supporting the arrested protesters as they were let go. A rally is planned at the university library tomorrow at noon.

10:00 am update: The morning follow-up post is up.

“You are not a committed anti-racist until you can look at the ugliness of racism without flinching.”

Womanist Musings. (Go read the whole post.)

Last week the Cal State Northridge Daily Sundial ran an article on student drinking habits that claimed that American first-year students “spend more time drinking than studying.” Their source for this claim was a deeply flawed report produced by a company that markets anti-alcohol programs to college campuses.

As we reported last month, the study in question was little more than a marketing handout for Outside the Classroom, a for-profit company that produces anti-drinking programming for use by student affairs administrators.

The study received quite a lot of attention on its release, in large part because it was presented at the annual meeting of NASPA, a professional association for professionals in the student affairs field. What received much less attention was the fact that Outside the Classroom is a major corporate sponsor of NASPA, and paid for time at the group’s annual meeting.

And the problems with the study don’t end with its sponsorship. Its methodology is questionable and its most often repeated conclusions are not supported by the evidence it offers.

In short, the Outside the Classroom “study” is shoddy, anti-student research from a company with a financial interest in portraying students as problem drinkers. Disseminating it doesn’t bring us any closer to actually understanding student drinking habits, healthy or unhealthy.

About This Blog

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StudentActivism.net is the work of Angus Johnston, a historian and advocate of American student organizing.

To contact Angus, click here. For more about him, check out AngusJohnston.com.