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Once a thriving country, Zimbabwe has tumbled into political and economic crisis in the last several years. Every aspect of national life has been affected by the collapse, and Zimbabwe’s universities have been no exception.
Ceaser Sitiya, pictured at right, is the vice-chair of the Students’ Representative Assembly of the University of Zimbabwe. In the summer of 2007, Sitiya (some news sources spell his name “Caesar Sitiya”) was a leader in protests against conditions at the university. According to Amnesty International, Sitiya was pulled from classes on July 7 of that year, arrested, and held for more than two weeks. Amnesty reports that he was tortured, starved, and denied access to a lawyer during his time in custody.
Last week Sitiya was informed that he has been suspended from the university for a period of two years for his role in the protests. Even after he becomes eligibile for re-admission, he will be barred from participating in student union activities and from living in the university’s dorms.
Other Zimbabwean student leaders face similar punishment from the university’s disciplinary committee.
ZINASU, the Zimbabwean national student union, has a website here. Their report on the events of July 2007 can be found here.
Twenty-nine students at New Jersey’s Readington Middle School protested the reduction of lunch hour to thirty minutes by paying for their lunches with pennies. Their principal sentenced twenty-nine of them to detention, but relented under pressure a few days later.
(The pennies story comes courtesy of Rad Geek People’s Daily, which I’ve added to the blogroll.)
Last month we reported that the University of Ottawa was considering imposing a new code of student conduct governing non-academic activities.
The university has seen a wave of student activism in the last two years, and students have expressed concern that this new code may be used to clamp down on campus organizing.
Shortly after our last report, several hundred students marched in protest against the proposed code. Opponents of the code have also created a blog to aid in their organizing effort.
(The above article says that several blogs and a Facebook group have been created, but we’ve only been able to uncover the one blog linked to above. If anyone is aware of other resources created by the Ottawa organizers, let us know and we’ll update this post.)
Finding that “the claimed interruption and disorder was really much the usual background noise of a middle and high school,” a Florida judge has overturned a school district’s ban on clothes that bear pro-gay messages.
Students at Ponce de Leon High School started sporting the messages after a lesbian student claimed the school’s principal told her that homosexuality was wrong and directed her not to discuss her sexual orientation with other students. When a rumor spread that a school assembly would feature an anti-gay speaker, students began planning a walkout.
Eight students were eventually suspended for activities relating to the protests and the walkout discussions.
The National Student News Service has posted a roundup of materials relating to youth and student voting in this week’s Oregon Democratic primary.
studentactivism.net 
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