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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.
Not long after midnight on January 16 of this year, twelve pledges of Yale’s Zeta Psi gathered at the entrance of the campus women’s center. They shouted “Dick! Dick! Dick! Dick!” and held up a sign that said “We Love Yale Sluts.”
Their act was part of a pledging “scavanger hunt,” and a photo of the group holding the sign was soon posted on Facebook.
Interference with the women’s center is an annual ritual during fraternity initiations at Yale. Last year an unidentified group gathered outside the center and chanted “No means yes, yes means anal!”
Under Yale’s code of student conduct, behavior that “has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work or academic performance or creating an intimidating or hostile academic or work environment” constitutes sexual harassment. This year women’s center members, arguing that the chants and the sign had the effect of interfering with women’s access to the center, filed charges of intimidation and harassment against the members of Zeta Psi.
The members of the fraternity were found not guilty of the charges nearly a month ago, but the committee’s decision did not become publicly known until this week, when news leaked to the Yale Daily News. Executive committee disciplinary proceedings are confidential, and no formal statement on the charges or their outcome has been made.
Story via Feministing, who have the best ongoing coverage of campus issues of any major political blog I know.
Update: In the course of filing the charges, the women’s center submitted a 26-page report on fraternity culture, university policies on frats and on sexual harassment, and the status of the women’s center on the Yale campus. That report is now available online.
The Wichita State University Sunflower has been told that its 2008-09 student government funding will not be disbursed until a review of the newspaper’s activities has been completed.
The funds in question are from student activity fees, which amount to approximately half the paper’s total budget. The review, however, seems to have been initiated at least in part by university administrators rather than students.
Budgets for student organizations at WSU are set by a Student Fees Committee composed of five students and two administrators. The student members are appointed by student government, but the committee is chaired by Ron Kopita, the university’s vice president for campus life and university relations. Sunflower editor-in-chief Todd Vogts says Kopita questioned Sunflower staffers about the newspaper’s operations and editorial content in mid-March, two weeks before the Student Fee Committee recommended a formal investigation of the paper.
The task force that will be reviewing the newspaper’s operations will be appointed by Kopita, not the student government, according to a memorandum that the Sunflower received from Dean of Students Cheryl Adams.
The Sunflower‘s current fiscal year ends in October. Kopita has not guaranteed that the task force’s work will be completed by then.
Update: The Sunflower task force is the subject of an article in the Wichita Eagle.
The administration of Evergreen State College has suspended that school’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society.
In February, students and others clashed with campus police after a Dead Prez concert in the university gym, overturning and vandalizing a police car. After that incident, the university declared a moratorium on on-campus concerts. In March, SDS held an anti-war folk music performance in defiance of the ban.
The chapter has been suspended for the remainder of the academic year and placed on probation until January 2009. According to an SDS press release, “the suspension means that SDS has lost its budget and office, can no longer hold meetings, book events, or use school facilities and equipment.”
An interview with two members of the suspended SDS chapter has been posted at the Dissident Voice.
studentactivism.net 
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