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Fourteen DePaul University students have staged a campus occupation against the university’s tuition policy — the first occupation at a US Catholic university this year.
On Thursday evening, students and allies staged an action in DePaul’s administrative offices as a part of the March 1 national day of student action. They met briefly with the university president, who rejected their tuition freeze demands. Non-students were escorted out of the conference room by police at 6:30 pm, and the remaining students left voluntarily two hours later.
Last night a group of students reconvened at the university’s student center in advance of a scheduled trustee vote on a tuition increase this morning. As the deadline for the building’s closing passed, fourteen students decided to remain in occupation. Supporters raised a tent outside the building, and made plans for a 7:30 am demonstration. In an overnight statement, the occupiers declared that the university’s tuition has increased by 35% in the last seven years, and that the average DePaul graduate now leaves with a $28,000 debt load.
The DePaul activists have been blogging at the site of CACHE, a multi-university Chicago activist coalition. Updates on the occupation are being live tweeted at the #occupydepaul hashtag.
8:30 am (Chicago Time) Update | With the trustee meeting scheduled to begin at the top of the hour (9 am Chicago time), students have learned that the meeting is being moved to a new, secret location.
Noon Update | From the Occupy Chicago Facebook page:
The DePaul administration was scheduled to meet this morning to vote on the tuition hike at the Lincoln Park campus. At the last minute, the meeting was moved to an undisclosed location. Anthony Alfano, President of the Student Government Association, accepted an invitation to the meeting. He was driven downtown by administrators, who made him enter through the back door of a high-rise and refuse[d] to reveal his location to him.
This is utterly astonishing, if true: Not only did the DePaul board of trustees move their meeting to an undisclosed off-campus location, but they refused to tell the students’ elected representative, whom they invited to the meeting, where that meeting was being held. It’s like something out of a bad movie.
12:30 Update | I’ve added DePaul to the site’s map of 2011-12 campus occupations. It’s the 38th occupation so far this academic year, the fourth in Illinois, and — as noted above — the first at a Catholic college.
It’s four o’clock in the afternoon (ET), I’m back from teaching, and I’m picking up my liveblog of today’s national day of student action where I left off two hours ago. So far today we’ve seen one campus (UC Santa Cruz) essentially shut down by student protest, significant citywide marches several places, students rallying inside the Massachusetts statehouse, and other actions of various kinds at dozens of campuses from coast to coast.
The day is young, and there’s clearly a lot more to come. Stay tuned.
Friday Update: I’ve put together a summary/synthesis post on the day’s events here.
• • •
11:00 pm | That’ll do it for me for tonight. More thoughts tomorrow.
9:54 pm | UC Santa Cruz activists have re-opened one of the two UCSC entrances to vehicular traffic.
9:43 pm | Some of the Berkeley/Oakland activists have been occupying a state building in San Francisco. They’re currently being removed from the building, issued citations, and released.
9:34 pm | The DePaul occupation has ended, with the occupiers regrouping for new actions tomorrow.
8:38 pm | Having dinner. DePaul occupation still ongoing, reports of occupation of chancellor’s office at UC San Diego. More in a bit.
7:31 pm | Reports coming in of police presence at the DePaul occupation. Situation still unclear, but one tweeter says the occupation was “partially broken up by cops.”
7:22 pm | Two big non-#M1 campus stories today. In Arizona, a state legislator withdrew his proposal to require (nearly) all students to pay at least $2000 a year in tuition out-of-pocket, regardless of financial need. And in Virginia, more than a dozen UVA students ended a 13-day hunger strike after the university administration acceded to many of their living wage demands.
6:58 pm | There’s now a livestream of the Berkeley/Oakland demonstration out front of the Morgan Stanley offices.
6:44 pm | Tweet from inside the DePaul occupation: “We’re staying. Come to 55 e jackson right away-we need your support!!!!”
6:37 pm | The Oakland marchers who aren’t going to Sacramento are heading to Morgan Stanley.
6:30 pm | The Student Labor Action Project is in the early stages of compiling a photo album of today’s actions. Check it out.
6:28 pm | Marchers are setting out from Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland, heading for … Sacramento, 99 miles away. Background here.
6:13 pm | DePaul admin building occupation is settling in. Occupier reports that they “just voted unanimously to stay in this room until we get a date and time for a public forum with the entire student body.” He says there are about 45 people there at the moment, and that the university’s president met with them, rejected their demands, and left.
6:09 pm |Via Twitter comes word of a Seattle march on the Gates Foundation headquarters. That’s the seventh city march (along with NYC, Philly, Boston, Oakland/Berkeley, DC, Montgomery) I’ve learned of today.
6:05 pm | The DC marchers delivered a statement of grievances and demands to an official at the Department of Education, who promised a response by a week from tomorrow. That action is apparently now over for the day.
5:49 pm | Students and supporters from around the Bay area have congregated in Oscar Grant Park, the longtime home of the Occupy Oakland encampment.
5:22 pm | We apparently have our first campus occupation of the afternoon. According to tweeter Brad Hamilton (who posted a photo), students at DePaul University in Chicago have occupied administrative offices there, demanding a tuition freeze at the Catholic institution.
5:01 pm | Actions today aren’t confined to the campuses and regions you’d expect, as this photo of a sizable rally at the Alabama state capitol demonstrates.
4:58 pm | Six tents and the shell of a geodesic dome are up on the UCSC campus, but it’s not clear whether an occupation is planned.
4:42 pm | DC marchers have arrived at the Department of Education, where they have been denied entry by police.
4:37 pm | Bad weather appears to have depressed turnout on both coasts earlier today, but rain seems to be ending both in Northern California and the NYC area at this hour.
4:33 pm | UC Santa Cruz remains almost entirely shut down as a result of students’ blockade of the campus’s two entrances. A motorist who drove through a crowd of protesters earlier today was “briefly detained” but apparently not arrested.
4:30 pm | Bay area march now heading from Berkeley to Oakland. Students who had been at the Boston state capitol are marching to Harvard.
4:25 pm | The American Association of University Professors has been tweeting about #M1 events all day, mentioning chapter support for actions at Hofstra, the U of Akron, Indiana U, Stetson U, Lincoln U, Delaware State, Marymount Manhattan, Bowie State, the U of Delaware, St. Catherine U, and the U of Rhode Island.
4:21 pm | Tweet of the afternoon, from San Francisco State: “Stuck in class and can’t walkout? Tweet out and #occupysfsu will come save you.”
4:18 pm | The Washington DC action is currently outside the offices of student loan corporation Sallie Mae. The founder of http://occupystudentdebt.com/ is speaking to the crowd.
4:15 pm | The New York City march has been on the move for several hours. Size is estimated at several hundred.
4:06 pm | In addition to the Boston march which has ended in the statehouse, there are citywide marches confirmed in New York, Philadelphia, the Bay area, and Washington DC so far.
4:02 pm | Students are inside the Massachusetts state capitol in Boston, hanging banners.
Today is a national day of action on American college campuses, a day of coordinated student protests, teach-ins, and occupations from coast to coast. I’ll be keeping tabs on the day’s events as they occur — scroll down to read everything from the beginning.
Note: Liveblogging continues here.
• • •
4:05 pm | I’ve resumed liveblogging in a new post.
1:23 pm | Very quickly, before I go: about two hours ago, a man driving a Ford Mustang accelerated through a crowd of students and others who were blocking access to the UCSC campus, striking several of them. The driver and a passenger were removed from the scene by police, but it is not yet clear whether either has been arrested. An hour later, a heckler at the protest took a swing at a student.
1:17 pm | Actions are heating up across the nation, but I have to go up to campus to teach. Follow #M1 for all the latest, and I’ll tweet as I can from @studentactivism. Liveblogging will resume by about four o’clock Eastern, and continue through the afternoon and evening.
1:04 pm | As noted at the 10:43 am update, President Obama is scheduled to speak at a New Hampshire community college within the hour.
1:00 pm | PA banner drop reads “KEEPING STATE IN PENN STATE.”
12:41 pm | Hashtags for the day’s actions are proliferating, but #M1 is drawing an ever-growing share of the total traffic. That’s the tag to use, and follow.
12:30 pm | Students from New York City campuses are holding a roving rally on and around the campus of NYU. Journalist Allison Kilkenny is tweeting from the march.
12:04 pm | The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports that UCSC student activists are setting up a “Tent University” not far from about a hundred students are participating in a blockade of the campus’s two entrances. University officials and police have not yet interfered with either the blockade or the tents.
11:44 am | Update on Berkeley admin building: Daily Cal reporter Chloe Hunt tweets that one of two entrances has been locked from the inside, but the other is still in use.
11:34 am | UC Berkeley has apparently shut down its administration building preemptively this morning. Activists have wrapped the building in crime-scene tape.
11:19 am | Inside Higher Ed’s Allie Grasgreen has a piece up on today’s actions, and it’s a solid one. One place of disagreement: Grasgreen says 2012 has been a “down time” so far, but in fact there have been nine campus occupations since the start of the spring semester, and that’s not counting such actions as the UVA hunger strike for a living wage, which began thirteen days ago and is still going on.
11:06 am | UCSC has shut down several campus cafes for the day, and administrators are urging faculty “to make accommodations, as appropriate, for students who are unable, through no fault of their own, to attend class.” No move yet to shut down the campus completely.
10:48 am | Rain is expected in the Northeast, Northwest, and parts of the Deep South today. But Northern California and the NYC region should be clearing up by early afternoon.
10:43 am | As it happens, President Obama is going to be speaking on a college campus today — he’s scheduled to give a speech at Nashua Community College in New Hampshire at 1:40 pm.
10:29 am | The UCSC blockade isn’t a new tactic. Santa Cruz students closed campus entrances to vehicles during the March 4 national protests in 2010, forcing the university to shut down the campus for the day.
10:23 am | UC Santa Cruz website confirms that “the campus is currently blocked to vehicular traffic,” and has been for nearly three hours. Buses are being rerouted to drop passengers at university entrances.
10:12 am | I’m compiling a Twitter list of folks who will likely be livetweeting M1 events. If you have suggestions for additions, let me know.
10:04 am | Tweet says activists will blockade UC Berkeley’s administration building, California Hall, at 7:30 am Pacific Time.
9:55 am | Twitter hashtags to follow today are #M1 and #OccupyEducation.
9:37 am ET | The day’s first major development comes from California, where students at UC Santa Cruz rose before dawn to shut down vehicular access to the campus. Activists say they will allow emergency services, childcare and health workers, and residents of on-campus housing through their barricades.
In September of last year the Associated Press revealed that the New York Police Department had, in conjunction with the Central Intelligence Agency, spied on more than half a dozen of the city’s campus Muslim student groups. Today it reported that the NYPD’s surveillance went much further.
In a story published this afternoon, the AP described how the NYPD:
- Set up a “safe house” in New Brunswick, New Jersey, tasked with monitoring Muslim students at Rutgers.
- Sent an undercover officer along on a 2009 whitewater rafting trip attended by 18 Muslim students from City College.
- Used a student informant to keep tabs on Muslims at Syracuse University.
- Plotted surveillance of “Somali Professors and students at SUNY-Buffalo” in coordination with police in that city.
- Conducted daily reviews of “websites, blogs and forums of Muslim student associations” at sixteen campuses in four states.
According to the AP, Muslim student groups monitored by the NYPD included those at “Yale; Columbia; the University of Pennsylvania; Syracuse; New York University; Clarkson University; the Newark and New Brunswick campuses of Rutgers; and the State University of New York campuses in Buffalo, Albany, Stony Brook and Potsdam; Queens College, Baruch College, Brooklyn College and La Guardia Community College.”
Matt Yglesias recently linked to the above chart on college enrollment as an illustration of the huge size of the American community college student body. His thoughts on that subject are well made and worth reading, but it’d be a missed opportunity to end the discussion there.
Here’s a few other things that jumped out at me:
- American higher education is overwhelmingly public. A full 77% of American college students are enrolled at public colleges and universities.
- The for-profit sector is a tiny sliver of higher education enrollment, despite its outsized share of government grant and loan money.
- Private research universities enroll only 4% of American undergrads, just one fifth as many as public research universities do.
- Traditional non-profit private universities and colleges enroll only 15% of undergrads, and about a quarter of students in bachelors degree granting programs.
- Taking private and public institutions together, only 24% of US undergraduates are enrolled at research universities.
Yglesias is right to point out the cultural invisibility of community college students, but our myopia extends far beyond the two-year/four-year split. Americans’ image of undergraduates is based on a higher education model that hasn’t existed in reality in generations, and those distortions have far-reaching effects on public policy and public opinion.
(Note: I haven’t been able to find the source for this chart, so it’s possible that some of its figures may be off. It does seem to reflect Carnegie data, however.)
studentactivism.net 
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