Well, this is wacky.

Aaron Porter, president of Britain’s National Union of Students, announced a few weeks back that he would not be running for a second term at the head of NUS, as is customary. Porter’s announcement came after months of criticism of his timid leadership of the organization.

With student fees at British universities skyrocketing, UK students have risen up in a dramatic series of protests and occupations, but Porter has distanced himself from the most aggressive tactics, and his criticisms of direct action have at times overshadowed his defenses of students’ rights.

The National Union of Students is a large and influential body in Britain, but it has long been charged with excessive coziness with the country’s Labour Party. Porter’s critics, in fact, have regularly accused him of tailoring his presidency to suit his political ambitions.

But it’s unlikely that anyone really expected this.

British media are reporting today that Porter, just 26 years old, plans to run for an open Labor seat in Parliament. This May. Five weeks before his term as NUS president ends.

Like I say. Wacky.

Update | Huh. Porter says, via Twitter, that “despite some nice calls from members of the Leicester Labour party, I have not & will not be putting my hat in the ring!” The filing deadline is tomorrow, so we’ll know for sure soon, but apparently the UK media got it wrong — or he got talked out of it.

Students in at least twenty states staged walkouts on Friday, supporting teachers (and teachers’ unions) in Wisconsin and throughout the country. The actions garnered a lot of attention at the grass roots — my blogpost on the walkouts is already this site’s eleventh most-read of all time — but virtually none in the national media.

Local media outlets, however, have been covering the story, and though most of the walkouts didn’t get any ink, quite a few have. Here are reports from news outlets and local bloggers on some three dozen walkouts in ten states, with more to come

• New Hampshire high schooler suspended for ten-minute walkout. (More here.)
• Sixty walk out in Amherst, Massachusetts.
• One hundred and fifty walk out and rally in Portland, Oregon.
• Students from two local high schools join rally at University of Illinois.
• Wisconsin students walk out in Beaver Dam, Stevens Point, Superior, Sheboygan, Eau Claire,
• Six hundred walk out in York, Illinois.
• High schoolers walk out in Teaneck, New Jersey.
• Roving walkout attracts students from three schools in Ithaca, New York.
• Two hundred walk out in Eugene, Oregon.
• Wooster, Ohio high school walkout targets local anti-union law.
• Hundreds walk out in Mankato, Minnesota.
• Charter school students walk out in Greenfield, Massachusetts.
• Most Idahoans staged their walkouts Thursday — students in at least eight communities participated.
• Some two hundred students walked out of a high school in Post Falls, Idaho on Friday.
• Photos and writeup on a walkout at the Brooklyn Free School, New York, NY.

If you’ve got more links, share them in comments and I’ll add them to the post.

The UC Irvine Office of Student Conduct has released its findings in a case that saw UC Student Regent Jesse Cheng arrested — and then released without charges — last fall.

Cheng was accused of attempted rape last October by a woman with whom he had previously had a relationship. He was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor sexual battery a few weeks later, but the district attorney’s office declined to bring charges.

Now, however, the UCI Office of Student Conduct has found that Cheng engaged in “unwanted touching” of a sexual nature, and placed him on probation.

Cheng denies the charges, and says that emails he sent to the accuser in which he admitted to, and apologized for, sexual assault and attempted rape were written under duress, at the accuser’s request. “She was calling me 50 times a day for two hours on the phone a day,” he said last month. “I was extremely stressed out. So I lied in the e-mails to do whatever I could to move forward with my life.”

Cheng has said that he does not intend to step down from his seat on the Board of Regents before his term ends this summer, but one feminist organization plans to hold an action at this Wednesday’s regents meeting to demand that he be removed from the board.

Monday Update | The Daily Cal has a story out this morning that suggests that Cheng’s continued service on the Board of Regents may be in doubt. The paper also reports that the chair of the Board of Regents has requested a review of the Office of Student Conduct’s procedures, followed by a meeting of the board’s Committee on Governance “to determine what action, if any, is warranted.” In an email to the paper, the chair went on to say that “students will continue to have representation by Student Regent-designate (Alfredo) Mireles” while the above process was playing out, a statement that seems to imply that Cheng is currently under some sort of formal or informal suspension from the board. Cheng himself declined to comment to the Daily Cal on his status as Student Regent or whether he will be in attendance at Wednesday’s board meeting.

Sunday Update | New post up with links to local media stories on more than three dozen walkouts in ten states. More to come!

Saturday Update | New information is still coming in this morning. Be sure to follow @studentactivism on Twitter for the latest.

High school and college students in Madison, Wisconsin are planning a two o’clock walkout this afternoon, and they’re picking up support and planned solidarity demonstrations all over the country.

Students will be converging on the Library Mall on the University of Wisconsin campus for a teach-in on the state’s education budget cuts and new restrictions on collective bargaining at three o’clock.

Wisconsin students are encouraging students around the country to hold walkouts at two o’clock local time, and right now the national Facebook group for the walkout is currently closing in on six thousand members.

I’ll be updating this post over the course of the day as new information comes in.

11:00 am ET | More on today’s planned walkouts, including a statement from a Madison high school senior who is helping coordinate the whole thing.

11:30 am | Governor Walker has signed the budget bill. A formal signing ceremony is reportedly scheduled for three o’clock at the Capitol, the same time as the planned teach-in at UW.

11:55 am | So far I’ve heard official word of walkouts in Amherst, Massachusetts, the University of Illinois, and the University of Minnesota. More to come…

12:15 pm | Students from at least eight communities in Idaho held walkouts yesterday.

12:45 pm | Portland, Oregon, Mankato, Minnesota, Austin, Texas.

1:00 pm | Walkout coming next week in Skokie, Illinois.

2:20 pm | News of walkouts is starting to bubble up on Twitter. Most of the tweets don’t identify school or location, but Teaneck NJ, Louisville KY, and New Paltz NY are now on the map. One student has even tweeted a pic of a teacher blocking the classroom door to keep students in.

2:55 pm | More from Twitter: Three schools in Ithaca NY have walked out. And it’s worth pointing out that most people participating today aren’t tweeting about it. What we’re seeing is just the tip of the iceberg.

3:15 pm | According to one report on Twitter, administrators at a high school in Flint, Michigan just staged a fire drill to thwart a walkout as it was getting underway.

3:20 pm | Walkouts happening all over Wisconsin. Too many to keep up with.

3:35 pm | Reports on Twitter of walkouts in North Carolina and Ohio. That makes fourteen states and counting.

3:45 pm | Colorado, too.

4:15 pm | As the walkout reached the Mountain time zone and a teach-in began at the University of Wisconsin campus, Governor Scott Walker held a ceremonial signing for the bill at the State Capitol.

4:50 pm | The vast majority of today’s actions have taken place at high schools — I think I’ve only seen evidence of four or five college walkouts, out of a total of several dozen at least. Many of these students are reporting that they’ve been prevented from walking out, or punished for doing so. And as I noted on Twitter a few minutes ago, the fact that so many schools ban the possession of cell phones probably has a lot to do with the low profile of these actions on social media.

High school students face huge barriers to political organizing, and today’s events are particularly significant when seen in that light.

5:05 pm | New reports coming in of walkouts in Maryland and Alaska!

5:10 pm | And add Washington State to the list, too. That’s eighteen.

5:15 pm | Tennessee!

8:50 am Saturday | I’m starting to comb through news reports from last night, and I’ve already turned up one state that wasn’t on yesterday’s list — New Hampshire. Much more soon.

Yesterday evening, as most of you know, the Republican majority in the Wisconsin State Senate pushed through a bill that would severely limit state employees’ ability to bargain collectively through unions. The bill, which was presented three weeks ago as part of new governor Scott Walker’s first state budget proposal, had been stalled by Democrats in the Senate who had managed to keep that body from obtaining quorum.

Here’s a quick rundown on what happened last night, and what’s coming up today and in the future.

For most legislation, a simple majority is enough to conduct Senate business, but certain financial legislation requires a sixty percent quorum. For the last three weeks, everyone in Wisconsin has been operating from the premise that this bill triggered that sixty percent provision, which meant that the Dems in the chamber (14 of 33 Senators, or 42.4%) could keep the Senate from acting by refusing to show up. But last night the Republican majority met and passed the bill on virtually no notice, while the Democratic Senators remained out of state.

Questions have been raised about the legality of last night’s actions, both on the basis of the quorum requirement and on notice and open meetings grounds. But this morning the bill is moving to the Wisconsin State Assembly, where the Republican majority is taking it up this morning.

There’s a lot more to say, and I’ll be updating this post as the day goes on, but that’ll do for a start.

10:30 Wisconsin Time | Thousands of demonstrators descended on the Capitol yesterday evening, and hundreds camped out in the rotunda last night, but the Capitol has been cleared and locked down in advance of this morning’s planned Assembly session. And when I say “locked down” I mean REALLY locked down — the Wisconsin Daily Journal is reporting that reporters were refused entry to the Capitol this morning when they showed up for a press conference called by the Assembly’s minority leader. Even more bizarre, at least one state legislator has told the WDJ that he was turned away from the building, despite the fact that he is a member of the body that is scheduled to hold a vote in the near future.

10:40 | Correction to last update: The Capitol is currently locked down, but last night’s crowds have not yet been fully cleared. Reports on Twitter say police are physically removing people now.

10:50 | I’m seeing reports of hundreds of students walking out of Madison-area high schools and middle schools this morning, and heading to the Capitol as a group. Will post confirming links when/if I get them.

11:00 | I’m off to teach. I’ll update on Twitter as I can, and I’ll be back with more this afternoon.

11:05 | According to the Cap Times liveblog, police just announced plans to open the Capitol to the public at 11 am.

3:30 pm | Back from teaching. The Assembly has been in session for several hours now, and the Republican majority has rebuffed several Democratic attempts to slow things down in light of last night’s controversies. The vote on the bill is expected soon. More in a moment…

3:45 pm | With twenty members of the Assembly waiting to speak, and Democratic legislators shouting out points of order and other procedural objections, the vote was just called. The bill passed 53-42, with several Republicans defecting to the Democratic side.