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United Students Against Sweatshops has extended its remarkable string of victories against clothing-maker Russell Athletic.
This week Boston College and the entire University of California system announced their intention to terminate contracts with RA, bringing to fifty-seven the number of colleges and universities that have disaffiliated so far this year.
The campaign against Russell Athletic stems from the company’s history of anti-labor activity in Honduras, specifically its closing of the Jerzees de Honduras factory in the wake of its unionization.
Education Not for Sale is a radical student network in the UK. I found out about them through their work in (and against) the National Union of Students, the British national student organization, which I’ll be writing more about soon, but for now, welcome them to the blogroll and check them out.
By the way, ENS has posted the only report I’ve seen so far on the April 18 National Student Co-ordination I mentioned the week before last, so you might want to check that out too.
The Student Affairs Collaborative Blog, a group blog of student affairs administrators, has a post up on student leader self-assessment. It lists a dozen questions to help students evaluate their “experience as a student leader.”
Here’s the list:
- What did I learn as a student leader?
- What will I need to remember from my student leadership year?
- Which interactions with others taught me the most about how to work with people?
- What do I know now that I didn’t know a year ago?
- What am I better at as a result of this student leadership experience?
- How would I describe my student leadership experience in 100 words?
- How am I better prepared for the next chapter in my story?
- What would I have done differently as a student leader?
- If I had one hour with a group of newly elected student leaders, what would I want to talk to them about?
- What mistakes did I make this year and what did I learn from them?
- What do I hope to be remembered for as a student leader?
- How could I have done better as a student leader?
I’ve gotta say that the conception of self-assessment presented here strikes me as really, really narrow.
“What did I learn,” it asks. “What am I better at? What mistakes did I make?” These aren’t bad questions. But what about “What did I accomplish?” or “Who did I help?” or “What did I change?”
There’s nothing here to encourage reflection on how the student’s involvement has changed their group or their campus or their community.
And that’s a particularly weird thing for a “student leader” self-assessment to leave out, because if leadership is about anything at all, it’s about change.
What it means to call someone a “student leader,” and whether that term is a useful one, are questions for another post. But if you’re a leader of any kind, you’re by definition leading folks, and you’re presumably trying to get them to a place better than where they are.
And those concepts are pretty much absent in these questions.
To a point, this reflects the nature of the student affairs administrator’s role. Universities are, by and large, not set up to support students’ efforts to make real change, and student affairs personnel are employed by universities, not students.
But I’ve known student affairs people who did actually believe in student empowerment, ones who encouraged students to ask themselves questions that were a lot more searching than these.
And so I turn it over to y’all. If you were preparing a self-assessment questionnaire for student activists, or student government types, or student organization leaders, what questions would you put on it?
What questions should we all be asking ourselves as this school year comes to an end?
The Arizona Students’ Association and the Associated Students of the University of Arizona have put up a powerful slideshow on the University of Arizona’s proposed tuition increase:
The idea behind the slideshow is simple: Let students speak directly to the increase would change their lives. Real students, real impact.
The statements speak to a wide variety of effects — “a third job,” “my little brother’s ability to come here,” “a plane ticket to visit my dad.” Each tells a personal story, and each gives that story a human face.
It’s a great, powerful statement. Go look.
And if you’re running an anti-tuition campaign of your own, maybe you should bring a camera and a whiteboard (or a pad and sharpie) to your next rally.
A coalition of student groups at New York City’s Brooklyn College is calling a class walkout at 3 pm on Wednesday, April 29.
The walkout is in opposition to a planned $600 tuition hike at CUNY. As the protest organizers put it, “80% of the tuition hike goes to fill a gap in the state’s budget,” making the hike a “tax for students, the very people to whom a $600 increase makes a huge difference!”
You can find out more about the walkout at its Facebook Event page.
May 2 update: Photos!
studentactivism.net 
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