You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Students’ category.
For a while now, I’ve been hearing rumblings about a planned second walkout in the University of California system, scheduled for November 18.
This semester’s first UC walkout took place on September 24. On that day, some ten thousand students, faculty and staff came together to protest budget cuts, enrollment reductions, and a huge planned tuition increase.
That fee hike is on the university Regents’ agenda for their next meeting, to be held November 17 through 19 at UCLA.
More to follow. Stay tuned…
The conveners of the upcoming Zagreb student protest symposium have made a request of the presenters:
The proposal is this: when you come to Zagreb bring with you a collection of photographs that would give the other participants of the symposium a general idea of everyday context of student life around you. These photographs would ideally include your faculties, dorms and other student-related facilities, and they would provide a general feel of both indoor and outdoor environment in which students spend their time (both study and leisure).
I absolutely love this idea. In fact, the only thing I love more than this idea is the idea of passing the request on to you.
Students around the world are shown Hollywood’s version of college life — now’s your chance to show them the reality. Send me your favorite photos of campus living, and I’ll pass them along to the folks in Zagreb. (I’ll also post them here, if you’re okay with that.)
You can email me the photos at angus at fecko dot com, post links as comments here, or post them to my wall on Facebook. Whatever you like. Just get them to me this week — the symposium starts on Friday!
I’ll be flying to Croatia in a few days for a three-day symposium on contemporary student activism.
The meeting, “Student Protests of 2009: Methods, Context, and Implications,” (or, in the original Croatian, Studentski Prosvjedi 2009: Metode, Kontekst, I Implikacije) is being sponsored by the Sociology students’ organization at the University of Zagreb, which saw a series of student occupations last spring. The upcoming event grew out of that experience, and out of the broader wave of student activism that’s been sweeping Europe in recent months. (The call for papers can be found here.)
I’ll have more to say about the symposium before it happens, and I’ll be blogging and tweeting about it while it’s going on, but for now here’s the schedule:
Friday
Does the Actual European Bologna strategy Respond to the European Students’ Aspirations?, Guillaume Sylvestre, France
The Struggle to Free Higher Education, Luka Matic, Croatia
Bachelor of Ass, Marcel Mansouri, Germany
Opening Banquet
Saturday
Politics in Education, Adis Sadikovic and Gorica Stevanovic, Bosnia and Herzegovina
From Democracy to Social Issues? Student Protests in Serbia Since the Early 1990s, Dorde Tomic, Germany
American Student Organizing in an Age of Social Networks, Angus Johnston, United States
The Student Protests as a Test for Civic Society, Kristiyan Vladislavov Hristov and Diana Boykova Velcheva, Bulgaria
Transitional Education, Azra Hadzihajdic and Emin Eminagic, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Sunday
Affective Politics, Zdravko Popovic, Croatia
Types of Protest Participants: An Empirical Analysis, panel presentation, Croatia
Croatian Student Protests and Video Cameras: The Importance of Filming as Much As Possible, Igor Bezinovic, Croatia
Short Film
Roundtable Discussion
On Tuesday night someone left a comment on one of my posts on the Southwestern College faculty suspensions that that passed on the text of SWC Governing Board President Jean Roesch’s Monday statement on the incident. Here’s that statement, quoted in full:
To: College Community
Many of you have learned that four faculty members were placed on paid administrative leave on Thursday, October 22, 2009 and three faculty members remain on paid administrative leave at this time, pending the outcome of the investigation. Please understand that no formal charges or allegations have been made against any College faculty member or employee at this time.
The student rally held between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. on October 22, 2009, is not the focus of the investigation. The College is investigating safety and security issues that arose after the approved organized student rally. The College respects, values and is committed to lawful free expression and the student rally provided an opportunity for our students to voice their concerns and to underscore the challenges that all community college students, and community colleges, are experiencing.
The College is committed to maintaining a safe environment for our students and staff, which is the focus of the investigation.
I’m guessing, since the comment was placed in response to a blogpost critical of the SWC administration, and since the commenter adopted the moniker “SWC Professor,” that I and my readers are intended to take this statement as a rebuttal to our criticisms. If so, it’s a deeply disappointing one.
President Roesch seems to believe that if you give students and faculty authorization to hold a one-hour rally at a specific on-campus location, you’ve dispensed with your obligations to protect “lawful free expression” in the college community. But that’s not how the First Amendment works, and it’s not how a college should work.
The First Amendment doesn’t just protect free speech. It also explicitly protects the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances. A public college administrator is in a very literal sense an agent of the government, and SWC is a public college.
Students and faculty at a public college have a moral right to hold a peaceful rally on campus. They have a moral right to peacefully march across campus to the president’s office. There should be no difference in the eyes of the law, and there should be no difference in the eyes of any campus administrator, between a “approved organized student rally” and a spontaneous, extemporaneous one.
The SWC administration has so far offered no evidence that any incident that took place on Thursday afternoon placed that day’s march outside the bounds of fundamental First Amendment protections.
The American Civil Liberties Union is offering fifteen college scholarships to high school seniors who have “demonstrated a strong commitment to civil liberties through some form of activism.” The ACLU Youth Activist Scholars will receive $7000 each, and will “be invited to participate in ongoing activities with the ACLU, including the Youth Activist Institute training program at the ACLU National office in New York City.”
Candidates for the scholarships must be nominated by their local ACLU affiliates (a directory of affiliates can be found here), and the application deadline is November 30.
studentactivism.net 
Recent Comments