You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Campus Protests’ category.
The York University strike is coming to a head.
For two and a half months, Canada’s third-largest university has been closed by a strike of CUPE local 3903, representing teaching assistants, graduate assistants, and adjunct faculty. The university has invoked a provision of Ontario labor law to force a one-time vote by the union membership on York’s latest proposal, and that vote will take place this Monday and Tuesday.
If all three units of the local approve the proposal in majority votes, the strike will end immediately and classes may resume as soon as the end of this week. If one or more units reject it, the strike will continue.
The two sides are wrangling over pay increases and job security, but some observers believe that the length of the new contract may be the crucial sticking point. Labor agreements at half a dozen other major Canadian universities expire in 2010, and the two-year deal CUPE is pushing for would allow them to join a multi-campus strike that year, should one develop. (The university is insisting on a three-year contract.)
There has been speculation that the provincial government may attempt to end the strike with back-to-work legislation, but the legislature is in recess until mid-February. The longer the strike goes, the more likely it is that an entire semester will have to be canceled, costing the university millions in lost tuition payments and throwing students’ progress toward degrees into disarray.
Voting begins tomorrow morning, and continues through early evening on Tuesday. Results will likely be announced that night. Check back here for more updates as the story continues to unfold.
January 20 Update: CUPE’s membership rejected the York offer by a decisive margin.
A sit-in protesting the current Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip is underway at the prestigious London School of Economics.
About forty students have been occupying the LSE’s Old Theatre since last night. They are demanding that the LSE…
- condemn the Israeli attack on Gaza and demand a ceasefire,
- divest from BAE Systems, a company that provides weapons to the Israeli military,
- provide five new scholarships to Palestinian students at LSE,
- conduct a fundraising campaign for the Medical Aid for Palestinians charity,
- donate surplus books and computers to Gaza educational institutions, and
- conduct no repraisals against protesting students.
The university released a formal response to the demands expressing concern over the humanitarian situation in Gaza while declaring that it “will not take a position” on the Israeli military action itself.
Here’s an excellent project.
Students for a Democratic Society has set up a wiki page for links to news coverage of SDS events and actions. The page is set up chronologically, so it’s easy to see what’s new, and easy to check up on what was going on at any particular time.
Since it’s a wiki, of course, anyone can add anything to it whenever they like. And it’s not just for traditional media coverage, either — I learned about it when the page linked to a December post of ours on the aftermath of a Brown SDS protest.
The page is part of a larger SDS wiki that I haven’t had a chance to explore much yet, but what I have seen I really like.
A morning grab-bag of stuff on the York University strike…
- Our post from last night on the announcement that a date has been set for the contract vote.
- An article from the Globe and Mail newspaper about an anti-strike Facebook group.
- A union parody of the York University website.
- The York Federation of Students has established a strike relief fund.
- The Toronto Star is running a series of profiles of students affected by the strike.
To keep tabs on our ongoing coverage of the York strike, check out our Labor category archives, or just bookmark our main page.
Last August, Mother Jones magazine ran a spread on campus activism that included a timeline of “Student Activism Firsts.”
It was a fluff piece, obviously thrown together pretty quickly and without much interest in historical accuracy, and like many such pieces it treated student activism as something that began in the sixties. I took a few notes with the idea of putting up an annotated version of the timeline, pointing out some of the more obvious mistakes, but I never got around to finishing it.
As I was preparing the Hillary Clinton/Carry Nation story last month, though, I stumbled across something that really jumped out at me.
In the course of researching that post, I Googled temperance campus prank photo, trying to remember what campus the Carry Nation prank had taken place on. I didn’t find what I was looking for, but I did find this.
That’s the index of the Oberlin College Archives, and as I flipped through it looking for temperance materials, I stumbled across a reference to a folder titled “Temperance ‘Sit-in,’ 1882.”
Huh.
studentactivism.net 
Recent Comments