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Police forcibly dispersed a student demonstration in the northern Indian city of Allahabad on Wednesday, sparking a retaliatory riot and two more days of protests.
Students from the University of Allahabad, one of India’s oldest universities, were protesting the administration’s refusal to hold elections for AU’s student government, which was dissolved two years ago. Police charged the crowd wielding long wooden canes known as lathi, injuring more than a dozen demonstrators.
Students later took to the streets, vandalizing a number of cars parked in the area. On Thursday police returned to campus in an attempt to arrest 12 of the participants in the Wednesday protest, but left having taken only two into custody.
Students burned a minister in effigy on campus today as protests against the university and the police continued.
Sunday evening update: Protesting students briefly blocked railway tracks in Allahahabad on Friday, and demonstrations continued over the weekend.
On the first day of classes since last Friday’s protest at Howard University, journalists from the Hilltop, Howard’s student newspaper, sat down with university president Sidney A. Ribeau.
Ribeau went through the protest’s demands point-by-point. He said he would implement a couple of them, and that a few had already been addressed. For most, though, he said that he needed more information, or that the proposal wasn’t feasible for logistical or financial reasons.
Leaders of the Howard University Student Association (HUSA), which helped organize the protest, were invited to meet with Ribeau yesterday as well, but they declined, saying that public dialogue, not closed-door meetings, were what was needed.
Last week the protesters set today as Ribeau’s deadline to respond to their demands.
See bottom of post for updates.
The first major American student protest of the new academic year has erupted at Howard University.
Hundreds of Howard students gathered outside the historically black university’s administration building on Friday, demanding that Howard address problems with financial aid, campus housing, and other issues. Rapper and entrepreneur Diddy, a Howard graduate, urged the students on via Twitter, telling them to “Do what we did and take IT OVER!!!!”
Classes began nearly two weeks ago at Howard, but many students say their financial aid is still in limbo. Students also complained about a shortage of on campus housing and about administration censorship of the student newspaper, the Hilltop.
The Hilltop reported on Twitter that after campus security locked the administration building down the protest moved on to the university chapel, where Howard student government officers addressed the crowd.
A thirteen-point list of demands presented to the administration included
- The resignation of the leadership of the Office of Student Affairs.
- Immediate reforms to financial aid policies.
- Bringing campus buildings into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
- Budgetary transparency within the university.
- Expansion of on-campus housing.
The protesters asked that the administration respond to their demands by next Wednesday, September 9.
More on this story as it develops…
Update: Here’s a YouTube clip from the protest, and a longer, edited YouTube vid, which includes an explanation of the demands.
Tuesday morning update: The Hilltop, Howard’s student newspaper, is going to meet with university president Sidney Ribeau at 12:30 pm this afternoon. Today’s Hilltop reports that more protests are planned if Ribeau does not adequately address the students’ demands by tomorrow.
Since the fall of 2005 the Texas Tech Daily Toreador has been running the number of US war dead in Iraq on its front page every issue. With the start of the fall semester, though, they’re dropping the feature.
The Toreador announced the change in an editorial last week, saying they made the decision “after President Barack Obama pledged to withdraw troops from Iraq by 2011.” With the Iraq war winding down, and the country “engaged in multiple foreign conflicts,” they feel that the Iraq tally “no longer serves readers as it once did.”
At a moment when the election of a new president has left the anti-Iraq war movement as splintered and quieted, the move appears to derive as much from a change in Washington as any change in Iraq. A withdrawal has been promised, yes, but even if it proceeds according to schedule the end of the war is still a long way off.
More than a hundred Americans have been killed in Iraq since Barack Obama took office as president. Two Americans have died there since the Toreador printed its editorial a week ago. That editorial does not adequately explain why the paper’s staff consider those deaths to be less worthy of notice than those that went before.
Oakland University, a public research university of 18,000 students located just north of Detroit, has been shut down by a faculty strike on the first day of the fall semester.
The campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors has been in contract talks with OU since mid-May, but the two sides remain divided on issues of pay, workload, and health benefits. Negotiations are continuing with the assistance of a state-appointed mediator.
In a statement announcing the closing, the university suggested that its “difficult economic circumstances” limited its ability to meet the AAUP’s contract demands. The union, however, claims that while the state’s “economic crisis is real, Oakland’s is not.”
Some three hundred faculty and students rallied at the campus this afternoon in support of the strikers, and negotiations are expected to continue through the holiday weekend.
Update: The Detroit News says OU student government president Kristin Dayag supports the strike.
studentactivism.net 
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