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#FreeCommunityCollege Interview on WBAI

January 12, 2015 in Students | by | Leave a comment

WBAI, the venerable NYC public radio station, had me on this morning to talk about Obama’s free community college proposal. You can find a stream of the segment here for the next couple of weeks — click on Haskins in the Morning for January 12, and skip forward to the 15-minute mark.

Anyway, it was a great interview, and it gave me the opportunity to provide a wide-ranging take on the subject, so I’ve transcribed it for y’all — edited lightly for clarity.

WBAI: Turning now to the announcement last week that President Obama made about a plan to make the first two years of community college free for all students. Under a program dubbed “America’s College Promise,” Obama administration officials have said that an estimated nine million student a year nationwide could benefit. The average tuition savings for a student at a two-year college is estimated to be $3800 a year. The administration so far has declined to provide an estimate of the cost to the federal government overall, but they said states would be expected to share about a quarter of the expense. Obama’s goal, said Cecilia Munoz, the White House’s domestic policy director, is “to make two years of college the norm the way high school is the norm.” Joining us to talk about what this change could mean, not just for students, but for teachers at community colleges around the country, is Angus Johnston. Angus is a historian of American student activism who teaches history at CUNY’s Hostos Community College. He also runs the website studentactivism.net. Angus, thanks for being with us this morning.

AJ: Good morning! Thanks for having me.

WBAI: So, as a community college teacher yourself, I wonder: What’s your reaction to Obama’s announcement of this program for a free two years of community college?

AJ: Well, there are things to be cautious about, certainly, but in the main I’m really excited. I think it’s been a long time coming, and I think it’s a tremendous opportunity — not only for students and faculty, but also for people organizing around access to higher ed.

WBAI: So what are some of the logistical questions that arise for you with a plan like this, in a place like New York City, and in a community college like yours, which is Hostos, one of the CUNY community colleges? What are some of the challenges facing community colleges, and how do you think this proposal might affect them logistically?

AJ: The biggest challenge for students is for those who intend to do a four-year degree who would choose this option as a low-cost way to start that process. Because we know that when students start at a community college and intend to transfer to a four-year school, a lot of them wind up falling by the wayside. That’s something that needs to be eased as much as possible, but it’s also something that will be encouraged by this plan. More students who intend to obtain a four-year degree will start at a community college if this gets implemented, and I’m a bit nervous about that.

WBAI: And can you tell us why? Why does that make you nervous? I mean, some of the reactions that I saw on Twitter from people who teach at places like Kingsborough Community College and Borough of Manhattan Community College was, “Oh my God, I can’t imagine having more students in those facilities, how could we possibly manage an increase in students?” Is that something you’re worried about?

AJ: It’s something I’m excited about! I mean, if we have more community college students, then we have to have the facilities for them, we have to have the faculty for them. Certainly it will be a matter of pushing hard to ensure that the faculty who are hired — and we will have to hire more faculty if we have more students — we’ll push hard to ensure that the faculty who are hired are full-time faculty on the tenure track, because we’ve got a huge problem with adjunctification at community colleges. But that’s something I think that we should welcome — that challenge of transforming our institutions to meet this new need.

WBAI: I do want to come back to the labor question that you raised, the question of who the people are who are going to be teaching these new students, and what this means for the labor question of, as you mentioned, adjunct labor and the tenure track in community colleges. But first, I just want to talk about the state funding aspect of this proposal. So Obama has said that one quarter of the funding for this plan will have to come from the states, and I wonder, based on your experience here in New York, how feasible you think that is. Is that a roadblock for this? What has been the trend in New York’s budget for community colleges? We’ve been seeing big reductions — would this require a big turnaround?

AJ: Well, throughout the country we’ve seen a disinvestment by the states in higher education — at the community college level, and even more intensely at the four-year college level. I think the intent here — and there are a lot of details that haven’t been released — but I think the intent here is to make the federal portion of the financial package so attractive to the states that they would pony up the money to match it because it’s a better deal for them, it’s a better deal for their students. And it’s also going to be, presumably, hard for a state to say, “Oh yes, we had the opportunity to make community college free for all of our students, but we chose not to do it, because we don’t have the” — whatever the dollar figure would be. So a lot of it is going to come down to the question of what exactly the federal government is proposing as far as this cost-sharing goes, and will it be a carrot rather than a stick for the states.

WBAI: Right, right. And so, I know that — one of the things that you mentioned before, an issue that a number of people have raised since this announcement, is the labor implications of the program. According to an adjunct faculty advocacy group called the New Faculty Majority, seventy percent of community college faculty are part-time. How do you think the Obama plan might affect the work of community college teachers and what you call the adjunctification of community college labor?

AJ: First of all, let me just say, and I apologize for seeming to disagree with your premise, but one thing that I want to say is that we have to distinguish between adjunct faculty and part-time faculty.

WBAI: Right. That’s a good point.

AJ: Because a lot of folks who are adjuncts are essentially full-time — in fact, including myself, I’m an adjunct faculty member teaching what is essentially a full-time courseload. So there’s that. But yes, it’s a huge problem. It’s a problem in community colleges and it’s a problem across the board in American higher education. And I think, again, one of the things that we’re going to have to do — as faculty members, as people who care about American higher ed, we’re going to have to see this not as something that’s being delivered from on high, but as something that we need to fight for. We need to fight to shape what the original proposal looks like, we need to fight to get something good passed, we need to fight to make sure that whatever is passed is something that is sustainable, and is good for us and good for our students. We need reinvestment in higher education, and we need reinvestment in full-time faculty, and we’ve had a very serious long term trend away from that. And I think that reimagining higher education as something that is a right for all Americans gives us an opportunity to reassert the importance and the centrality of having faculty who have the capacity and the tools to do the job right.

WBAI: Absolutely.

WBAI: Angus Johnston is a historian of American student activism. He teaches history at CUNY’s Hostos Community College. Angus, could you tell us — you talked about students falling by the wayside, initially coming in for a two-year program and not going on to complete their degrees. Could you just briefly flesh that out for us for a bit? What happens to these students who, as you say, fall by the wayside?

AJ: Sure. There are two things going on here. One is that graduation rates for community colleges — the folks who get the two-year degree — are very low. They’re low throughout the country and have been low for a very long time. And there are a number of issues involved in that. A lot of students are part time, a lot of students are working full time and returning students, and there’s all sorts of life issues and other things that could interfere with the completion of a degree there. And we need to work on that. That’s something that a lot of folks are pushing to improve, and it’s something that we need to spend a lot more time and energy on. The other issue is successfully making the transfer from a community college to a senior college to continue on to get the four-year degree. And a problem there is that the process of selecting a four-year college that’s going to be appropriate for you, that’s going to be accessible for you, figuring out how to navigate that — all of that is difficult. And then there are other problems which this program is designed to address, such as the question of whether your credits are going to transfer. One of the things that Obama has said is that a pre-requisite for colleges participating in this program will be to have a really robust and vigorous credit-transfer policy. There are downsides to that, as with everything, but that’s a really important part of what he’s suggesting.

WBAI: And how does that work at CUNY, from where you sit? Do you see your students going on to the CUNY senior colleges, places like Brooklyn College and where I’m sitting today, City College?

AJ: Yes, a lot of them do, and in fact a lot of them go on to more selective private and public colleges as well. One of the things about the community college, and I see this every semester, is that the range of students, the variety of students, is so incredible, because you’ve got students who are there for all sorts of different reasons. Some of them are immigrants and have not built up a track record in the American educational system. Some of them are folks who have tried college in the past and not done so well. Some of them are folks who have never had the opportunity to go to college before, and so either in youth or later on in life they’re giving it a crack. And so some of the strongest students that I have ever taught in my life, and I’ve taught throughout the CUNY system, have been students that I’ve had at Hostos.

WBAI: So I wonder. One of the criticisms floating around about this plan is that it gives a subsidy, more or less, to more middle-class students, right? That the poorest students who are going into community college programs are already eligible for federal Pell Grants, and that the level of Pell Grants is already more than most of the in-state tuition costs for students going to community colleges. I wonder what your reaction is to that, as an advocate for free, fair higher education for everyone? What do you think about the idea that this program might actually be subsidizing people who need it less?

AJ: I think there are two issues there. The first is that I’ve got a lot of students who don’t have a lot of money who would be shocked to hear the description of financial aid as being incredibly cushy and satisfying for everybody. And certainly there are gaps in the Obama proposal as well. If it only covers tuition, or only covers tuition and fees, that’s not sufficient. There’s a scholar named Sara Goldrick-Rab out of Wisconsin who has presented a similar proposal which goes well beyond tuition and fees, and I think we should push this in that direction. So the first thing is that I would take issue with the premise. The second thing is — and this is a more profound question — I believe that education should be free. I believe that the role of the public educational system is to provide an education to anybody who can benefit from it. And if we’re talking about SUNY Binghamton or we’re talking about Berkeley, well okay, we can have that discussion on another day and reasonsable people may disagree. But if we’re talking about a place like Hostos Community College, the idea that we are swimming in all of these upper middle class students is just kind of silly. And another thing that’s really really important is the whole question of sticker shock, which refers to the idea that when students see what the listed tuition rate is, they may be scared off. If students know that Hostos is free, if students know that any of the CUNY or SUNY community colleges are free, they will be much much more inclined to go. And the students who will be more inclined to go are going to be the students who know least about navigating the system.

WBAI: Right.

AJ: Whatever their economic background is, they’re the students who most need help getting into the system. And frankly, K through 12 education is free to everyone including the wealthiest among us, and we’ve survived as a country having made that decision.

WBAI: Right. I saw a funny tweet this weekend that said something like, “Those first twelve years of education, that’s America, but public education beyond that in the thirteenth year, that’s socialism.”

AJ: Exactly. And somebody — I think I retweeted that one, and somebody responded saying that with the rise of the charter school movement, more and more people are saying that those first thirteen years are socialism as well.

WBAI: Right.

AJ: And I think that’s a legitimate point too.

WBAI: So the questions that this program opens vis a vis the privatization of higher education and what the Obama administration’s stance has been towards for-profit higher education is a discussion for another day, and we’d love to have you back sometime to talk about that. But very briefly, in our last thirty seconds or so, I wonder, as a historian of student activism — we’ve seen many movements, particularly here in CUNY, for the idea of free higher education. Do you see the proposal as pushing this forward, pushing this further, particularly from the student side?

AJ: Well, I’ve been working with students who have been pushing for free higher education in the United States for a very long time now, and the first thing that always gets said to them is that it’s preposterous, it’s unrealistic, it’s a fantasy. Well now we’ve got the President of the United States saying it’s not a fantasy, and I think that one of the things that we’re going to see out of this is a huge new invigoration of the student-led grassroots movement for free public higher education at the community college level and beyond. I think it’s going to be a very exciting spring as far as student organizing goes.

WBAI: Well, that is definitely exciting news, exciting prospects. We have been speaking to Angus Johnston. He is a professor of History at Hostos Community College, and runs the website studentactivism.net. Thanks so much for being with us this morning, Angus.

AJ: Thank you.

The Latest on Obama’s Free Community College Plan

January 9, 2015 in Students | by | 2 comments

Last night President Obama announced a plan to partner with states to make two years of free community college available to all Americans. The proposal, introduced with a YouTube video from the president and a  press release factsheet, will be the focus of a presidential speech at Pellissippi State Community College in Tennessee later today.

I’ve written a number of times before about why I support free public higher education — about why it’s a worthy concept in general and about the potential of Tennessee’s implementation of it on the community college level. Hell, I’ve even written a manifesto on the subject, complete with tee shirt.

Obama’s proposal is not the one that I would have put forward. There are a lot of details yet to be fleshed out, and some real reasons for concern about the plan as described. As a prod for a new national discussion, however, and as a starting point for organizing, I welcome it wholeheartedly.

I’ll be watching and reporting on Obama’s speech when it happens in a few hours, and writing more about my thoughts then and later. First, though, a roundup of others’ initial reactions:

  • American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten says the AFT, a union of K-12 and college educators, is “delighted” with the initiative.
  • History professor David Perry likes the plan, and calls for a push to incorporate mandates for full-time faculty hiring into the program’s college credentialing process.
  • The New York Times notes that Tennessee’s governor and both of its senators — all Republicans — will be at today’s speech.
  • Politico adds that he’ll be joined by Vice President Biden, as well as Jill Biden — herself a community college professor.
  • Matt Reed, a community college dean who has a regular column in Inside Higher Ed, is concerned about sustained funding for such a project, and doubts it’ll get through Congress before the next presidential election.
  • The Institute for College Access and Success released a stinging attack on the plan last night, which it has partially walked back as more details have become public. TICAS remains, however, opposed to free tuition plans that aren’t targeted through means testing.
  • Forbes columnist Andrew Kelly worries about costs, standards, and undercutting for-profit colleges.
  • On that last subject, at this writing (10:15 am ET) for-profit education stocks are down an average of about 1.5% from yesterday’s close.

That’s just a start. I’ll have a lot more in a bit.

Prayer for a New Mother

December 24, 2014 in Students | by | Leave a comment

The things she knew, let her forget again –
The voices in the sky, the fear, the cold,
The gaping shepherds, and the queer old men
Piling their clumsy gifts of foreign gold.

Let her have laughter with her little one;
Teach her the needless, tuneless songs to sing;
Grant her her right to whisper to her son
The foolish names one dare not call a king.

Keep from her dreams the rumble of a crowd,
The smell of rough-cut wood, the trail of red,
The thick and chilly whiteness of the shroud
That wraps the strange new body of the dead.

Ah, let her go, kind Lord, where mothers go
And boast his pretty words and ways, and plan
The proud and happy years that they shall know
Together, when her son is grown a man.

–Dorothy Parker, 1928

Yes, Christina Hoff Sommers is a Rape Denialist

December 7, 2014 in Students | by | 34 comments

May 2015 Update | Christina Hoff Sommers has posted a rebuttal to this post on her Facebook page, and I’ve written a reply to that rebuttal. In the course of composing that reply I discovered that one claim I made in the post below was in error — I apologized for that error in the reply linked above, and I have corrected it in the blogpost here.

If you were around for the so-called Culture Wars of the mid-1990s, you probably remember Christina Hoff Sommers — her 1994 book Who Stole Feminism? was a centerpiece of right-wing attacks on mainstream feminist theory and organizing at the time. Recently Sommers has re-emerged as the “mom” — that’s literally what they call her — of #GamerGate, that weird movement of video game fans obsessed with “ethics in gaming journalism” and what they see as feminist attacks on their hobby.

I haven’t paid more than desultory attention to Sommers since the nineties, so when I somehow wound up at her Twitter feed on Saturday I was surprised to see her supportively retweeting this:

The assertions in this tweet — that Rolling Stone “invented” its recent story on an alleged gang rape and that this supposed invention single-handedly discredits broader “rape culture” arguments — struck me as even more ridiculous than I’d remembered Sommers being back in the day, so I fired off a quick tweet expressing my surprise.

Too quick, as it turned out, because when I went back to Sommers’ timeline, I saw that it was stuffed with even weirder stuff, much of it in Sommers’ own words. Mildly embarrassed by my ignorance of her current mindset, I deleted the tweet, but as I did so I noticed that several people had already responded to it, so I figured I should explain:

This second tweet wasn’t directed to her, as you can see — I didn’t include her screen name in it, didn’t @ her on it. It was a heads-up to my own Twitter folks about why the previous tweet had disappeared. But she found it anyway, and RTed it, along with a followup declaring that “Much of the data on sexual violence is flawed. Victims need good research & smart policies—not hype.”

Sommers only has about 32,000 followers, but those two tweets unleashed a flood of responses — all, sadly, while I was on my way to my kid’s birthday party. A few of the tweets were over-the-top repulsive. Most, though, just took issue — often abusively — with my charge that Sommers is a “rape denialist.” It’s those that I wished I’d had time and space to reply to as they came in, and those that I’d like to respond to today. Because I do consider Sommers a rape denialist, and I think it’s important to say exactly what I mean.

So. Why do I say it, and what do I mean?

I mean this: Christina Hoff Sommers, in her many recent public statements about rape and sexual assault in America, understates the prevalence of rape in this country in ways that are unsupported by the evidence. She analogizes America’s rape crisis to entirely invented “crises” of the past while wildly overstating the evidence for the existence of an epidemic of false rape claims. To read her writing, watch her videos, and follow her on Twitter is to be given a wholly unrealistic impression of the scale and seriousness of rape in America. And that’s the case — and this is crucial — even if you agree with her contention that rape reporting data is seriously flawed.

Let me say that again, because this was a core claim that her supporters made on Saturday afternoon: I am not calling Christina Hoff Sommers a rape denialist because we rely on different statistical estimates of the prevalence of rape. I am calling her a rape denialist because the way she deploys even her own preferred statistics is fundamentally bogus.

Enough introduction. Let’s get down to cases.

On Saturday Sommers tweeted me a link to a video in which she critiqued a 2011 CDC study that concluded that about 1.3 million women were raped in 2010, saying that “the agency’s figures are wildly at odds with the official crime statistics, the Justice Department’s annual crime survey.” She’s referring to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which, she says, “reports that there were about 188,000 rapes and sexual assaults in 2010.”

What’s behind this discrepancy, to Sommers’ mind? Beyond unspecific methodological concerns, Sommers offers a number of concrete criticisms of the study’s questioning and statistical analysis.

None of these criticisms hold up.

To begin with, Sommers claims that “no-one interviewed” by the CDC “was asked if they had been raped or sexually assaulted,” but this claim is ridiculously misleading. The study’s core rape estimate was generated by respondents’ answers when asked whether anyone had “used physical force or threats of physical harm to make you have” anal, oral, or vaginal sex — a clear, straightforward, unambiguous description of rape. Some 620,000 of the women that the CDC reported as having been raped in the previous year — almost exactly half of the total — were the result of affirmative answers to that question.

And what about the rest? They answered in the affirmative to questions about either attempted rape or rape facilitated by drugs or alcohol. There too, Sommers dramatically misstates the statistical evidence.

As an example, Sommers makes the following claim: “Sixty-one point five percent of the women the CDC projected as rape victims in 2010 experienced what the CDC called ‘alcohol and drug facilitated penetration.'” Here she leaves the clear impression that more than three-fifths of the incidents of rape reported fell into this category, but that’s not the case. Although 61% of the women the CDC says were raped did report alcohol and drug facilitated penetration, 49% reported forced penetration, and another 41% reported attempted forced penetration. Many, in other words, reported multiple types of assault, and alcohol and drug facilitated penetration accounts for 41%, not 61%, of the reports.

But that statistical sleight-of-hand is only a small part of Sommers’ misrepresentation in this area. She suggests that the CDC counts consensual “sex while inebriated” as rape — indefensible, if true — but she does so by selectively and tendentiously quoting from the questionnaire. In fact, that section of the questionnaire — read to all respondents, but never mentioned by Sommers — states specifically that the questions within it concern sexual contact that “happens when a person is unable to consent to it or stop it from happening because they were drunk, high, drugged, or passed out from alcohol, drugs, or medications.”

Sommers knows this, but she deliberately excludes it from her writing and speaking on the topic in order to facilitate her misrepresentation of the CDC report.

Want more? Here’s more. Sommers claims that the NCVS found that there were “about 188,000 rapes and sexual assaults in 2010.” But the CDC figure of 1.3 million, as we have seen, includes both completed and attempted rape, which Sommers’ 188,000 does not. Adding together the NCVS stats for completed and attempted rape, to make it an apples-to-apples comparison with the CDC, gives us a total of a quarter million victims.

May 2015 Note | I have discovered that the above claim was erroneous. Details here.

So yes, the CDC found more sexual assaults than the NCVS, and yes, they found it by asking broader questions. (The NCVS asks about “rape, attempted rape, or other type of sexual attack.”) But the CDC’s questions are far more robust than she claims and the one category of sexual assault that she singles out for mockery is both more reasonable and a smaller portion of the whole than she would have us believe.

Sommers urges us to reject the CDC data as preposterous, in other words, but the arguments she puts forward against it are factually weak and intellectually dishonest.

And if her data-based arguments are spurious, what she does with them is even worse. In the video linked above she describes the “women’s crisis” portrayed by research such as the CDC’s as “manufactured,” and as “madness.” On Saturday morning she tweeted that the United States is currently in the midst of a “rape panic” analogous to the wholly invented Satanic ritual abuse scare of the 1980s, driven by a “false accusation culture on campus.” And this wasn’t just a poorly phrased tweet — in it, she linked to a Time magazine column from earlier this year in which she went on at length about the Satanic abuse panic and its “striking similarities” to the rape “panic” of today. And after she tweeted that link she went even further, approvingly retweeting two readers who likened our current dialogue around rape to the Salem witch trials.

There were no witches in Salem. There were no Satanic ritual abusers running preschools in the 1980s. But even the NCVS, which Sommers cites as the “gold standard” for such statistics, concludes that nearly a quarter of a million women experience rape or attempted rape each year. Our country’s rape crisis is real, not imaginary, and it is the millions of American women who are raped, not the comparatively tiny number of men who are falsely accused, who bear the overwhelming majority of its burden.

To claim otherwise can only be described as denial.

Note | As an anti-spam measure, the first comment on this blog from any commenter is automatically sent to moderation. (Subsequent comments are typically approved automatically.) If you comment on this post, and you haven’t commented before, be patient — your comment will go up as soon as I see it.

Update | A little more about my use of the word “denialism.” Some have claimed that since Sommers doesn’t deny that rape exists at all, she can’t fairly be called a rape denialist. I address this in the post itself, but to underscore and clarify:

If one misrepresents the true scope or scale of a real problem one can be fairly described as a “denialist” in that arena. If you admit that climate change is real, but offer cooked, false data to misrepresent its extent, you’re a climate change denialist. If you insist in the face of the evidence — as some widely-quoted pseudo-scholars do — that the Nazis “only” killed a few hundred thousand Jews, you’re a holocaust denialist. And if you continually, willfully misrepresent the statistics and scholarship surrounding rape and sexual assault in order to foster a false narrative that minimizes the extent of that crisis, then yes, you’re a rape denialist.

May 13, 2015 Update | Sommers posted a reply to this five-month-old blogpost on Facebook this morning. My response can be found here.

American Student Protest Timeline, 2014-15

December 4, 2014 in Students | by | 13 comments

What you see below is a new interactive map of student protests across the United States in the current academic year, which I launched in early December and will be updating through next June. (You can read more about the project in the lovely piece that the Village Voice ran this morning.) As I update the map I’ll also be updating the chronological list of actions that appears below it in this post. As of December 12 there are 160 protests and other events noted on the list, and the most recent 40 entries are being uploaded to the map. (Note that one action, the November 17 University of Hawaii graduate student protest, has been left off of the map for now, until I can figure out how to keep Google Maps from defaulting to cutting off the eastern United States with it included.)

Here’s the full list. Be sure to check back here or follow me on Twitter at @studentactivism for all the latest.

American Student Protest Timeline, 2014-15

August

  • Columbia Anti-Rape Project New York, August: Columbia student Emma Sulkowicz created a senior thesis project of carrying the mattress on which she was sexually assaulted around campus to protest the college’s refusal to take action against her assailant. The protest sparked waves of student organizing at Columbia and beyond.
  • #SlashThrasher, FSU Florida, August: Students at Florida State University staged a multi-pronged campaign to block the appointment of former state legislator John Thrasher to the college’s presidency.
  • Howard “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” Photo Washington, DC, August 13: Just four days after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, more than a hundred Howard University students gathered for a “hands up don’t shoot” photograph that quickly went viral on social media. http://www.hlntv.com/article/2014/08/14/ferguson-dont-shoot-howard-university
  • UIUC Trustee Meeting Disruption Illinois, August 22: Students staged a sit-in outside of a meeting of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign board of trustees after they were prevented from addressing the meeting in support of un-hired professor Steven Salaita.
  • Jefferson High Walkout California, August 25: Hundreds of students at Jefferson High School in South Los Angeles walked out of classes to protest widespread failures of the school administration, including scheduling errors that locked them out of needed classes.
  • HS Students March Against Principal’s Firing Mississippi, August 28: A hundred students at Rosa Fort High School marched from their school to administrators’ offices to protest the firing of their principal. http://www.wmcactionnews5.com/story/26393194/several-people-hold-protest-at-mississippi-high-school
  • Protesters Get College President’s Resignation Vermont, August 29: Students protesting at a meeting of the Burlington College board of trustees confronted the college president as she left the meeting, demanding her resignation. Incredibly, she gave it to them on the spot. Her exact words: “I resign. Happy? Goodbye.” http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/local/2014/08/29/burlington-college-students-press-presidents-resignation/14800683/

September

  • Students Support Vocal Christian Teacher Georgia, September 9: Hundreds of students marched through the halls of Sequoyah High School in response to a rumor that a popular teacher known to inject religion into classroom discussions had been fired. The teacher, John Osborne, had taken a voluntary leave of absence. https://www.accessnorthga.com/detail.php?n=279371
  • Brandeis Sexual Assault Protest Massachusetts, September 10: Fifty students staged a protest at Brandeis University in Waltham to protest the college’s handling of sexual assault. http://www.wbur.org/2014/09/11/brandeis-sexual-assault-protest
  • Confederate Flag Protested at Bryn Mawr Pennsylvania, September 15: Bryn Mawr students staged a series of protests after two white Southern students hung a Confederate flag in their dorm, then taped a “Mason-Dixon Line” on a hallway floor in response to demands that they take it down. http://swarthmorephoenix.com/2014/09/25/bryn-mawr-campus-roiled-by-confederate-flag-mason-dixon-line-in-dormitory/
  • UD Students Demand Action on Sexual Harassment Delaware, September 19: Hundreds of University of Delaware students rallied to demand transparency and accountability in the college’s sexual harassment policies after the student newspaper alleged that a sociology professor had offered a female student a high grade in exchange for sex. http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/education/2014/09/19/hundreds-protest-uds-harassment-policy/15904149/
  • Cheltanham HS Sit-In Pennsylvania, September 19: Five hundred students at Cheltanham High School staged a sit-in against new, restrictive conduct regulations.
  • Colgate Occupation New York, September 22: Hundreds of students at Colgate University occupied the college’s admissions office for five days, protesting college policies on racial, class, and gender inclusivity, and winning a variety of concessions from the administration.
  • HS Curriculum Protest Colorado, September 22: Hundreds of students from Evergreen High School in Colorado staged a protest at a school board meeting against plans to restrict discussion of “civil disorder and social strife” in US history classes.
  • U of C March Against Rape Threat Illinois, September 24: Two hundred University of Chicago students marched in protest against an anonymous threat of rape made in response to the posting of a Tumblr list of suspected sexual predators. http://chicagoist.com/2014/09/28/university_of_chicago_students_prot.php
  • U of M Students Demand Ouster of Athletics Officials Michigan, September 30: Students at the University of Michigan staged a series of protests calling for the dismissal of the college’s athletics director and football coach after the team’s quarterback was sent back onto the field after suffering a head injury during a game. AD Dave Brandon resigned at the end of October and football coach Brady Hoke was fired in early December. http://onlyagame.wbur.org/2014/10/01/michigan-shane-morris-head-injury

October

November

  • Syracuse Occupation New York, November 3: Students staged an 18-day sit-in of an administrative building on campus. The students, who were protesting a variety of administration policies, ended the occupation voluntarily after winning a number of concessions.
  • UPR Solidarity With Mexican Students Puerto Rico, November 5: Students at the University of Puerto Rico held a day of action in solidarity with the 43 Mexican student activists who disappeared in September. The students are believed to have been kidnapped and killed by local police and drug traffickers.http://dialogodigital.upr.edu/index.php/La-UPR-se-solidariza-con-los-estudiantes-mexicanos-desaparecidos.html
  • Colorado Test Rebellion Colorado, November 6: More than five thousand Colorado high school seniors refused to take statewide standardized tests, and hundreds staged walkouts and other protests against the tests. http://www.cpr.org/news/story/thousands-students-protest-colorado-standardized-tests
  • Iowa Students Stand Against Yik Yak Bigots Iowa, November 6: Dozens of students at the University of Northern Iowa rallied in support of students on the campus who had recently been targeted by racist, sexist and homophobic posts on the anonymous social media site Yik Yak. http://www.northern-iowan.org/news/view.php/855710/UNIted-we-stand
  • HS Students Press for Better Sex Ed Nevada, November 12: Clark County high school students staged a protest at a school board meeting to demand more effective, specific, and comprehensive sexual education classes. http://www.8newsnow.com/story/27381921/students-speak-out-about-sex-ed-curriculum-at-ccsds-board-meeting
  • CSU Students Protest Mandatory Fees California, November 13: Dozens of California State University students protested the planned imposition of new mandatory fees in the CSU system. http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/CSU-Students-Protest-Student-Success-Fees–282613091.html
  • Hawaii Grad Student Protest Hawaii, November 17: Graduate students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa erected tents on campus in a multi-day protest against planned budget cuts.https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/11/20/grad-students-u-hawaii-protest-rumored-cuts
  • Virginia Students Protest Racist Tweet Virginia, November 17: A dozen students walked out of classes at Booker T. Washington High School in Norfolk to protest a tweet by an assistant principal that called interracial prom dating “every white girl’s father’s worst nightmare.” http://wavy.com/2014/11/17/norfolk-students-protest-principals-offensive-tweet/
  • U of So Maine Budget Protest Maine, November 17: Students at the University of Southern Maine took over a meeting of the university’s board of trustees to protest plans to eliminate programs and cut faculty lines to close a budget deficit.
  • UCR Tuition Protest California, November 18: Hundreds of students at the University of Calfornia, Riverside protested a system-wide tuition hike, occupying a hallway outside of the university president’s office for several hours.
  • #LiabilityOfTheMind, U of Chicago Illinois, November 18: Students at the University of Chicago launched a Twitter hashtag campaign to highlight institutional bigotry at the university. http://feministing.com/2014/11/19/uchicago-students-speak-out-against-institutional-failures-with-trending-liabilityofthemind-hashtag/
  • UCLA Student Govt Supports Israel Divestment California, November 18: The UCLA student government voted 8-2 to call on the University of California to divest from companies with financial ties to the Israeli military and the occupied territories. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ucla-divestment-israel-20141119-story.html
  • Davis Mrak Hall Occupation California, November 18: Twenty students occupied Mrak Hall on the UC Davis campus in protest of the UC system trustees’ planned tuition hike vote, which took place the following day. http://fox40.com/2014/11/19/students-occupy-administration-building-to-protest-tuition-hike/
  • Berkeley Occupation California, November 19: Students at UC Berkeley occupied a building on campus for seven days in protest over a system-wide tuition hike. They abandoned the sit-in before Thanksgiving break, though a handful of students maintained an encampment outside the building afterwards.
  • Valier HS Sit-In Montana, November 19: Fifty students at Valier High School in Vailer, Montana staged a sit-in during school hours in support of a school staff member who had been suspended. The staffer was later reinstated. http://www.krtv.com/news/valier-high-school-staff-member-back-on-the-job-after-student-sit-in-/
  • UCLA Tuition Protest California, November 20: UCLA students protesting a system-wide tuition increase surrounded the site of a planned bonfire to mark an upcoming football game against the University of Southern California, forcing the bonfire’s cancellation.
  • West Bend HS Hall Pass Protest Wisconsin, November 20: A hundred students at West Bend High School staged a roving protest against new, larger hall passes that they say treat them like children. Police were called after students tore down posters and turned on water fountains, and one student was arrested.
  • HS Students Silently Protest Missouri Governor Missouri, November 20: A group of students rose and silently took up a “hands up don’t shoot” stance during a school assembly at the Lincoln College Preparatory Academy while Missouri Governor Jay Nixon was addressing the student body. The students, who were protesting the police killing of Mike Brown in the state and the government’s response to it, left the room peacefully when asked. http://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/students-protest-ferguson-shooting-during-governor-nixons-speech-at-school-assembly
  • WA Students Rally for Mexican Activists Washington, November 20: Three dozen students at Central Washington University rallied in solidarity with 43 Mexican student activists who disappeared in September. http://www.dailyrecordnews.com/members/cwu-protest-raises-awareness-of-disappearance-in-mexico/article_a6234720-71a9-11e4-9b39-b7b5c5be9a30.html
  • CA CC Students March For Mexican Activists California, November 20: Students at San Diego Community College marched in solidarity with 43 Mexican student activists who disappeared in September. http://www.sdcitytimes.com/news/2014/12/10/city-students-rally-for-the-missing-43-ayotzinapa-students/
  • UVA Students Protest Rape Virginia, November 22: A series of student protests roiled the University of Virginia campus after Rolling Stone magazine reported on an alleged campus gang rape that had gone unpunished. http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/a-weekend-of-protest-at-uva-as-rolling-stone-rape-story-jolts-campus-20141124
  • Norman HS Rape Protest Oklahoma, November 24: Hundreds of students walked out of Norman High School in Norman, Oklahoma to protest the school administration’s handling of the rape of three girls at the school by a fellow student.
  • UCI Tuition Demo California, November 24: About 40 UC Irvine students staged a 90-minute administration building sit-in to protest a system-wide tuition hike.
  • UC Davis Tuition Walkout California, November 24: Hundreds of UC Davis students staged a walkout and march to protest a system-wide tuition hike. The students occupied a campus building for several hours. http://www.theaggie.org/2014/11/24/uc-davis-students-call-for-statewide/
  • Seattle Ferguson Walkout Washington, November 24: One thousand Seattle high school students walked out of classes and staged marches in the city protesting the non-indictment of police officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Mike Brown.
  • Northwestern Rape Protest Illinois, November 24: Students called off a planned sit-in at Northwestern University after the university announced that it was abandoning plans to enter mediation with a professor accused of sexual assault.
  • UCSC Occupation California, November 24: Several dozen UCSC students occupied a building on campus for six days in protest of a system-wide tuition hike. They ended the sit-in voluntarily before the Thanksgiving break.
  • UCSD Occupation California, November 24: UCSD students occupied a lecture hall on campus for at least one night in opposition to a system-wide tuition hike.
  • Ohio U Ferguson Occupation Ohio, November 24: A hundred Ohio University students occupied an administration building on campus for several hours after the grand jury decision in the Mike Brown killing, demanding increased diversity on campus, a disarming of campus police, and other reforms. They left the building voluntarily at 2:30 in the morning.
  • Gonzaga Anti-Rape Organizing Washington, November 24: Gonzaga University’s Title IX Coordinator resigned suddenly after two weeks of student anti-rape organizing. Activists are pressing for a role in choosing her replacement. http://www.inlander.com/spokane/gu-shake-up/Content?oid=2382973
  • UCSD Frats Suspend Activities California, November 25: Fraternities and sororities at UC San Diego announced that they were suspending all social activities indefinitely after a group of frat brothers disrupted a Take Back the Night march by throwing eggs, screaming obscenities, and waving dildos at the marchers. http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/nov/25/sdsu-fraternities-sororities-sexual-assaults/?#article-copy
  • Columbia HS Ferguson Walkout New Jersey, November 25: A hundred students at Columbia High School in northern New Jersey walked out of classes in protest of the police killing of Mike Brown.
  • Minneapolis Ferguson Protest Minnesota, November 25: Four hundred students walked out of South High School in Minneapolis to protest the police killing of Mike Brown. The students staged an hourlong sit-in on school property, then marched to a local police station.
  • Poly Western HS Ferguson Protest Maryland, November 25: Students at Poly Western High School in Baltimore staged a daylong sit-in at their school’s auditorium to protest the police killing of Mike Brown.
  • U of RI Ferguson Protest Rhode Island, November 25: Several dozen University of Rhode Island students staged a die-in near the college’s student union, blocking traffic on a local road. The students were protesting the police killing of Mike Brown.
  • CAPA Ferguson Protest Pennsylvania, November 25: Students at the Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts school staged a sit-in inside the school after their principal forbade them from joining a city-wide protest against the police killing of Mike Brown.
  • Morehouse Ferguson Protest Georgia, November 25: Two hundred students gathered at Morehouse College to protest the police killing of Mke Brown.
  • Michigan Ferguson Vigil Michigan, November 25: More than a thousand students at the University of Michigan participated in a protest vigil against the non-indictment of police officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Mike Brown. http://www.michigandaily.com/news/community-members-protest-ferguson-decision
  • Clark Students’ Ferguson March Massachusetts, November 25: Several hundred students from Clark University staged a daylong protest against the non-indictment of police officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Mike Brown. http://worcestermag.com/2014/11/25/worcesters-streets-give-rise-protest-wake-ferguson-ruling/29331
  • Howard Activists Raise Pan-African Flag Washington, DC, November 25. On the morning after the non-indictment of officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Mike Brown, unknown activists replaced a prominent American flag on the Howard University campus with a Garveyite Pan-African flag, flown at half mast. http://dcist.com/2014/11/photo_howard_u_replaces_american_fl.php
  • St Cloud State Ferguson Rally Minnesota, November 25: About forty students staged a protest against the non-indictment of officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Mike Brown. http://wjon.com/peaceful-rally-at-st-cloud-state-university-over-ferguson-decision-audio/
  • Colby Ferguson Protest Maine, November 25: Fifty students at Colby College staged a silent protest against the non-indictment of officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Mike Brown. http://www.colby.edu/news/2014/12/02/students-protest-ferguson-grand-jury-decision/
  • Binghamton Ferguson March New York, November 25: Several dozen students at Colby College marched against the non-indictment of officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Mike Brown. http://www.wbng.com/news/local/Students-protest-Ferguson-decision-283805701.html
  • CMU Ferguson Protest Michigan, November 25: More than a hundred students at Central Michigan University staged a protest against the non-indictment of officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Mike Brown. http://college.usatoday.com/2014/11/26/central-michigan-university-students-protest-ferguson-decision/
  • Kent State Ferguson March Ohio, November 25: More than two hundred students staged a protest against the non-indictment of officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Mike Brown. http://fox8.com/2014/11/25/kent-state-students-protest-ferguson-decision/
  • MTSU Ferguson March Tennessee, November 25: Three hundred students at Middle Tennessee State University staged a protest against the non-indictment of officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Mike Brown. http://mtsusidelines.com/2014/11/mtsu-students-gather-to-protest-mike-brown-case-verdict/
  • ND State Ferguson Rally North Dakota, November 26: A group of six students staged a small protest against the non-indictment of officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Mike Brown. http://ndsuspectrum.com/ndsu-students-rally-for-michael-brown/
  • U of MD Campus Police Sit-In Maryland, November 26: More than a hundred University of Maryland students occupied a cafeteria on campus for three hours in response to the police killing of Mike Brown. They demanded a variety of reforms to the UMD campus police.
  • UCSD Ferguson Protest California, November 26: Students closed Interstate I-5 Northbound near UC San Diego for nearly half an hour in a protest against the non-indictment of Darren Wilson for the killing of Mike Brown. The protest was organized by the UCSD Black Student Union.
  • Students Protest Elimination of Football Alabama, November 30: Hundreds of students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham participated in a series of marches and protests intended to save UAB’s football team from being shut down. The elimination of football at the college was formally announced a few days later. http://www.myfoxal.com/story/27515309/uab-students-march-in-the-streets-for-freeuab-rally

December

About This Blog

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StudentActivism.net is the work of Angus Johnston, a historian and advocate of American student organizing.

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