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The student staffers at the Oregon Daily Emerald have ended their strike after winning three of their four demands. They will be entering into mediation with their board of directors next week to resolve the remaining issues.
As the Emerald staff noted on their blog, thirty-three student newspapers across the nation have published a joint editorial in solidarity with the strikers.
I went to the “Talk Back NYU!” forum last night, and it was definitely a worthwhile event.
The proceedings were confidential, so I won’t go into any detail, but I don’t think I’ll be violating any trusts if I pass along a few general impressions:
The TBNYU folks are engaged in a thoughtful conversation about what went wrong in the occupation, and how to apply what they’ve learned to the future. They’re searching for ways to get word out more effectively, and to bring more NYU students on board. That last seems to already be happening — a solid chunk of the people present at last nights’ meeting were new to the group.
The dominant impression I was left with was of a group with more on the ball than their public persona suggests. Why they weren’t better able to articulate their message, and to what extent they’ll be able to do so going forward, remain open questions, I think, but they’re engaged with those questions in a serious way.
We’ve just gotten a heads-up from Roy of The Young Vote about an action taking place in New York this afternoon…
At 3 pm today, there’s going to be a CUNY rally at BMCC against Governor Paterson’s proposed budget cuts and tuition hikes. The rally is going to be held at the outdoor plaza at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, 199 Chambers Street, and will be followed by a march on City Hall at four.
Here’s the rally’s facebook event page and a map of the location.
The entire editorial staff of the Oregon Daily Emerald, the University of Oregon student newspaper, went on strike yesterday morning.
The background to the strike is somewhat convoluted, but it has its origins in a power struggle between the paper’s student staff and its board of directors, a body that includes students, faculty, and others. In recent weeks, the board has moved to hire a non-student “publisher” to oversee the paper’s operations, and the process of filling the position has left the staff believing that their editorial independence has been compromised.
At a board meeting on Tuesday night, the Emerald staff demanded that the board rescind a job offer made to a candidate for publisher last month, that it open up a national search to fill the position, that it bar anyone who serves as publisher from being simultaneously employed by the university, and that it establish the publisher and the paper’s editor as “equals in the organization,” rather than granting the publisher supervisory power as the board had planned.
After the meeting, board chair Jeanne Long sent editor-in-chief Ashley Chase an email declaring that the board would not “be bullied and blackmailed,” and that an acceptance of the demands “would essentially dissolve the structure of the corporation.” At six o’clock the next morning the staff published what it said was “the last edition of the Emerald we will publish until the board meets the four demands,” and declared itself on strike.
The university’s student government, which provides a portion of the paper’s funding, has released a statement in support of the staffers’ demands, and the Emerald website reports that the board and staff will be meeting on Thursday morning in an attempt to resolve the dispute.
Update: The striking staff of the Emerald has a blog up. As they note, the newspaper’s board has published a non-student edition of the Emerald this morning, with editorial content drawn almost exclusively from the AP wire. We’ll be following this story as it develops, both here and on our twitter feed.
March 6 update: The Emerald staff has ended their strike, and is going into mediation with the board.
Four pieces of news this morning in the student campaign against Russell Athletic:
- The University of Montana has become the 20th campus to cut ties with Russell. In a letter to the company, UM Executive Vice President Jim Foley said, “We believe that your actions constitute a violation of our vendor code of conduct, which we implemented together with faculty, students and staff on our campus and we expect as a licensee for you to uphold.”
- Students in England protested Russell at the UK headquarters of RA’s parent company, Fruit of the Loom, on Tuesday. One group of protesters staged a die-in as others dressed as the “Fruit of Doom” mock-trampled them.
- In an effort to blunt the effect of United Students Against Sweatshops’ Rein In Russell blog, which is located at reininrussell.blogspot.com, Russell Athletic has apparently purchased the domain reininrussell.com, which it is operating as a mirror of its “Social Responsibility Resource Site.”
- Russell’s critics have found their way to the Russell Athletic facebook fan page.
May 1 Update: FIFTY-SEVEN campuses. Wow!
studentactivism.net 
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