You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Campus Protests’ category.
If you thought the end of the school year meant no more grass-roots student agitation until fall, you thought wrong. Not gonna happen. Not this year. Yesterday students in California and Wisconsin, two of the country’s most active states, held targeted protests, and there’s more on the horizon.
In California, students at UCLA staged a campus march and sit-in to protest plans to suspend free tutoring services at the university’s Covel Commons. The group, who had timed their action to get noisy only during scheduled breaks between final exams, met with a vice chancellor and took steps to keep the pressure on in the weeks to come.
More on what’s happening in Wisconsin later today…
“The events we’re seeing are happening because this university is not a community of students and teachers as it should be. Instead it’s an institution run by professional managers who have other interests. The security police on campus should serve the students and faculty. Instead they are hostile and contemptuous towards them, and often harass them. As for the administration, it should be in the employ of students and faculty, not the other way around. The students have rebelled against the administration because it identifies itself with all the outside forces that the students oppose.”
–Harvard professor Jeremy Larner, 1970
Nine activists, seven of them students, were arrested at Ohio State University yesterday afternoon at the offices of university president Gordon Gee. The nine were part of a group of more than a hundred who had gathered to protest OSU’s relationship with campus contractor Sodexo.
The activists were affiliated with the OSU chapter of United Students Against Sweatshops, a national organization whose members have mounted nearly a dozen major campus protests across the country in recent weeks. USAS was spurred to action by reports of Sodexo worker rights abuses in at least five countries, as well as reports of mistreatment by Sodexo workers at OSU’s own sports stadium.
Western Washington University last week broke ties with Sodexo in the face of a USAS-led campaign, while administrators at Emory and the University of Washington have arrested students peacefully protesting against the company.
Student sit-ins and occupations have become a common sight in California over the last couple of years, but this week has seen something new — a sit-in at a union office.
Two factions have been competing for leadership of UAW Local 2865, the local that represents academic student employees in the University of California system. Balloting in the union election ended eight days ago, but the vote count was suspended abruptly last weekend, and has yet to resume.
The incumbent United for Social and Economic Justice slate shut down the count last Saturday, claiming irregularities in the voting and alleging that the insurgents were using “scorched earth tactics” to disrupt the process.
The challengers, Academic Workers for a Democratic Union, countered that USEJ pulled the plug because of fears that AWDU might win an upset victory, and staged a sit-in in the union office to press for transparency in the process. Expressing concern that the disruption “contributes to the public perception that unions are corrupt and outmoded,” a group of labor scholars released a public letter calling for the count to resume.
The AWDU, which grew out of California’s student protest movement, says Local 2865 has operated undemocratically, has passed up opportunities to forge coalitions with activists in the state, and has rolled over in contract negotiations.
On Tuesday, the two sides agreed on protocols and mediators for a resumption of the count, but that resumption, slated for yesterday morning, hasn’t yet occurred. Meanwhile, the two sides continue to exchange accusations on their respective blogs (USEJ and AWDU).
Fingers crossed for a swift and just end to this stalemate.
Nearly a dozen students occupied a portion of the Rutgers administration building overnight in defiance of an administration that cut off their access to food and water yesterday evening. The group was able to sneak supplies in via a makeshift pulley system, and say they have no intention of leaving until their demands are met.
The group is demanding that Rutgers’ president endorse a tuition freeze, that new scholarships be put in place for underprivileged and first-generation students, that transcript fees be eliminated, and that the university increase “support for the rights of ALL University affiliated workers.” In addition, the group is calling on Rutgers to implement a new shared governance structure for the university. (A detailed explanation of the demands can be found at the above link.)
The occupiers have a Facebook page and a Twitter feed, and the For Student Power blog has been liveblogging their action since yesterday afternoon.
studentactivism.net 
Recent Comments