You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Student vs. Student’ category.
The leadership of the Simon Fraser Student Society (SFSS) has announced a Sunday lockout of SFSS’s union employees, after two years of unsuccessful contract negotiations. Unless an agreement is reached by tomorrow afternoon, CUPE local 3338’s twenty employees will be barred from working their jobs.
Unsurprisingly, the two sides characterize the state of negotiations differently, with CUPE arguing that SFSS is demanding “dramatic wage rollbacks and cuts to staffing levels,” while SFSS president Jeff McCann says that the student society is asking for a 12% average pay cut, with about a quarter of that loss to be restored over the course of the new contract. (Edit: see comments for more details on the proposed cuts.)
Activists claim that this move is ideologically motivated, noting that newly-elected SFSS leaders announced the lockout simultaneously with an effort to evict the Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group (SFPIRG) from student-owned offices.
I’ll be following this story as it develops, but I think one element that hasn’t yet received much attention is worth emphasizing — the timing of the lockout.
Now, I don’t know anything about what triggered this particular decision. It’s possible that there’s a compelling reason why this had to happen now. But as I’ve written many times before, summer is the season when university administrators traditionally launch their most obnoxious initiatives, on the premise that there aren’t any students around to object. If you want to pave a community garden, or eliminate a department, or create a new parking fee, or whatever, summer’s the time to do it.
Like I say, I don’t know why SFSS acted when it did. Maybe they had a good reason. But if they timed this lockout — and the SFPIRG eviction — to take place in July because they knew that their student opponents wouldn’t be able to mobilize … well, that’s just punk. It’s anti-democratic, and it’s anti-student. It’s wrong.
Student sit-ins and occupations have become a common sight in California over the last couple of years, but this week has seen something new — a sit-in at a union office.
Two factions have been competing for leadership of UAW Local 2865, the local that represents academic student employees in the University of California system. Balloting in the union election ended eight days ago, but the vote count was suspended abruptly last weekend, and has yet to resume.
The incumbent United for Social and Economic Justice slate shut down the count last Saturday, claiming irregularities in the voting and alleging that the insurgents were using “scorched earth tactics” to disrupt the process.
The challengers, Academic Workers for a Democratic Union, countered that USEJ pulled the plug because of fears that AWDU might win an upset victory, and staged a sit-in in the union office to press for transparency in the process. Expressing concern that the disruption “contributes to the public perception that unions are corrupt and outmoded,” a group of labor scholars released a public letter calling for the count to resume.
The AWDU, which grew out of California’s student protest movement, says Local 2865 has operated undemocratically, has passed up opportunities to forge coalitions with activists in the state, and has rolled over in contract negotiations.
On Tuesday, the two sides agreed on protocols and mediators for a resumption of the count, but that resumption, slated for yesterday morning, hasn’t yet occurred. Meanwhile, the two sides continue to exchange accusations on their respective blogs (USEJ and AWDU).
Fingers crossed for a swift and just end to this stalemate.
This will be my last Alexandra Wallace post, I promise.
On Friday Wallace’s family released a second statement to the Daily Bruin in which she apologized again for her anti-Asian video, and announced that she’s withdrawing from UCLA because of concern for her safety. Earlier that day, UCLA announced that Wallace would not be subject to campus judicial sanctions because of the video.
Here’s the text of Wallace’s second apology:
In an attempt to produce a humorous YouTube video, I have offended the UCLA community and the entire Asian culture. I am truly sorry for the hurtful words I said and the pain it caused to anyone who watched the video. Especially in the wake of the ongoing disaster in Japan, I would do anything to take back my insensitive words. I could write apology letters all day and night, but I know they wouldn’t erase the video from your memory, nor would they act to reverse my inappropriate action.
I made a mistake. My mistake, however, has lead to the harassment of my family, the publishing of my personal information, death threats, and being ostracized from an entire community. Accordingly, for personal safety reasons, I have chosen to no longer attend classes at UCLA.
This seems like an appropriate time to revisit some advice I offered in the wake of the Tyler Clementi incident last fall: Don’t be a jackass. It could ruin your life.
The student senate of the University of North Texas last week rejected a bylaw amendment that would have allowed same-sex couples to run for king and queen of homecoming.
Student government regulations at UNT do not bar LGBT students from running for homecoming king and queen, but they do provide that the court be elected as a male-female couple. The proposed bylaw amendment would have eliminated that restriction.
The bill, which had been introduced a week earlier, generated a strong negative response from UNT parents and alumni.
Debate on the proposal lasted for an hour, and at times grew heated. The final vote was five in favor of the change, ten opposed, and eight abstentions.
One student who voted against the bill said that he had been swayed by threats from alumni to end charitable donations to UNT, and from parents of students who had gone so far as to threaten to force their children to withdraw from the university.
Student government interns conducted an informal poll of two hundred students before the vote, and the UNT student newspaper, the NT Daily, said the results were “generally negative.” Comments on the Daily‘s coverage of the vote have, however, been mostly supportive of the defeated amendment.
(Thanks to @ericstoller on Twitter for the heads-up on this story.)
Right about the time that I was posting yesterday’s piece on the UC Santa Cruz commons building occupation, that sit-in was coming to a voluntary end.
So far there’s been no statement on the end of the occupation by the students who took over the building, and no reporting on the development from UC Santa Cruz’s student newspaper or Santa Cruz Indymedia, but an article in a local paper suggests that the decision to leave came at the request of the graduate student organization that owns the building.
Thanks to @dettman on Twitter for passing on the news late last night.
October 16 update | Another building occupation began last night at UCSC.
studentactivism.net 
Recent Comments