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Update: I’ve put up a follow-up post with new details and links on this story here, and a discussion of Chopra’s actions here.
Wow. This is … wow.
Four professors at Southwestern College, a community college in Chula Vista, California, have been suspended from their jobs and barred from campus — apparently for supporting a peaceful student budget protest.
The protest took place last Thursday, and drew the participation of several hundred SWC students. By Friday, the four professors had all received letters saying that they had been suspended effective immediately. The letters suggested that each of the four had violated a California state law prohibiting the willful disruption of “the orderly operation of the campus.”
English Professor Philip Lopez, the president of the college’s faculty union and one of the four suspended professors said he had been given no clear explanation for his suspension, but was sure it was an act of retaliation for the protest. “Clearly,” he told Inside Higher Ed, “the administration doesn’t think there is such a thing as the First Amendment.”
Another of the suspended professors, creative writing instructor Andrew Rempt, told the San Diego Union Tribune that the college’s head of human resources showed up at his home on Thursday evening with a police officer in tow to deliver his suspension letter by hand.
The president of the college, Raj K. Chopra, is on vacation, and the position of college spokesperson is currently vacant. Inside Higher Ed was unable to reach any other college official for an explanation of their action.
Update | A short, cryptic statement from Chopra’s executive assistant claims that the university is conducting an “investigation” of a matter “unrelated to the student rally.”
Second Update | This story keeps getting weirder. According to the blog Save Our Southwestern College, Chopra and HR director Jackie Osborne both went on vacation on Friday morning, hours after putting the faculty suspensions into effect. Chopra is expected to be gone from campus for three weeks.
Third Update | A post at Save Our Southwestern College identifies all four suspended professors. An anonymous comment on that post states that three of the four suspended professors participated in the budget rally, and that the suspension of the fourth was lifted when it was learned that she had not been in attendance at the protest. That commenter also claims that “at least one student … has received a letter warning him of the consequences of speaking out at SWC.”
Fourth Update | In a new interview with a local television station, targeted professor Philip Lopez calls the suspensions an act of “union busting,” and says all four profs were critics of Chopra’s policies.
Tuesday Update | As noted at the top of this story, I’ve now written a follow-up post with new details and links.
Yesterday saw a statewide conference in Berkeley of California student activists working on the struggle to save public higher education in the state. More news as we get it.
Monday update | This morning’s Daily Californian reports that six hundred students attended Saturday’s conference, and that they voted to hold a statewide day of action on the budget crisis on March 4.
The Californian also put up a video report on the conference, featuring clips from the conference and a brief interview with UC student regent designate (and friend of StudentActivism.net) Jesse Cheng.
Linda Sue Warner, the president of Haskell Indian Nation University, isn’t having a good year.
Warner, who has served as president of HINU since 2007, took criticism in February for a bizarre episode in which she forced a student critic of her administration to graduate early. At the time, Warner was summoned to Washington DC for an emergency meeting with university trustees and government officials.
Warner kept her job after that incident, but it wasn’t long before she was in the spotlight again.
As part of a campaign to improve and expand the campus, Warner sought to raise tuition from $215 a semester to $1000. HINU is, however, the only four-year college for Native American students that is operated by the federal government, and it has a long tradition of free or nearly-free education. Warner’s plans to nearly quintuple fees sparked a huge campus backlash, and the university’s board of regents called for her to be fired.
That hasn’t happened … yet.
At the beginning of the fall semester, Warner was told by her bosses at the Bureau of Indian Education that she would not be returning to HINU this year. Instead, she would be sent to the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, a two-year college in New Mexico, to help them with their accreditation process. HINU would have an interim president while she was away.
According to news reports, Warner has been forbidden to talk to the press.
As of now, Warner is slated to return to HINU in January. We’ll keep an eye on the story and let you know whether that happens.
In the meantime, be sure to check out our coverage of that involuntary early graduation story from the spring. It’s a weird one.
Students at California State University Fresno staged a walkout and teach-in on Wednesday, protesting the massive fee increases and budget cuts that are underway at California’s public universities.
An estimated four hundred Fresno State students participated in the walkout, which built steam over the course of the morning and included a march around campus.
At two o’clock that afternoon, one hundred students climbed the stairs to the fourth floor of the campus library, which houses the offices of Fresno State president John D. Welty.
The students sat in outside his suite for two hours before Welty arrived, and secured an agreement that Welty will participate in a public meeting one week from Tuesday to discuss students’ demands.
This was the fifth sit-in of the fall semester at a California public university, following actions at UCLA and Berkeley, and two at UC Santa Cruz. This weekend, students from across California will gather at Berkeley for a statewide activist conference on the budget crisis.
Two weeks after their occupation of a graduate student union building ended, UCSC student activists staged another campus takeover last night.
Details are still sketchy on the current occupation, but here’s what I have so far:
Sometime yesterday, apparently yesterday evening, students began an occupation at the University of California Santa Cruz.
According to this post at Santa Cruz Indymedia, the occupation is of UCSC’s “Humanities 2” building, which houses classrooms and offices, including the office of the Dean of Social Sciences. A comment there says that one student was maced and arrested early in the occupation, but that as of one o’clock this morning, other students remained barricaded inside, controlling the entire building.
This statement from UCSC activists, dated yesterday, indicates that more than one student was arrested and maced, and charges that students were not given proper warning before police moved in.
2:30 pm update | New details from Twitterer @creativecstasy, a UCSC student who was on the scene last night (and who took the photo posted above). She says the activists who conducted the takeover “knew what they were doing,” and that they “moved swiftly,” using “furniture/benches/trash [cans] to barricade doors.”
Once the occupiers were inside, supporters of the takeover massed for a dance party in front of the building, while the occupation’s manifesto was read aloud and projected with scrolling text on an outside wall. The occupation was still going on when she left late last night, @creativecstasy says, and as far as she knows the students are still inside now.
4:00 pm update | UC Santa Cruz has released a statement on the events of last night. By that account, three students were pepper-sprayed while attempting to barricade the building with a table. One of the three was arrested, and the other two avoided capture.
The UCSC statement also says that students took over the building “for several hours last night,” but gives no details about when and how the occupation ended. A cryptic note posted moments ago on the Occupy CA website, however, seems to suggest that the students left the building voluntarily.
morning update | Two responses to the UCSC administration’s statement have been posted on the Occupy CA website.
studentactivism.net 
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