The above map, an ongoing project charting all of the events in tomorrow’s March 4 Day of Action, currently includes well over a hundred actions in some thirty-two states, with more being added all the time.

If you click on any “pin” on the map, you’ll be taken to a short description of the action, along with links to further details and contact information for the folks involved.

For new readers, the March 4 Day of Action to Defend Education is a grass-roots event in which students, faculty, and others are coming together around the country to speak and act. The Day of Action was originally conceived in California as a response to the current crisis in higher education in that state, but it has since grown to encompass students and others at educational institutions at all levels in all parts of the country — from Berkeley and San Diego to Portland, Maine and Montgomery, Alabama.

More information on the Day of Action can be found at the Defend Education website, which was one of the earliest sponsors, but there is no one coordinating group behind March 4, no one agenda, no one ideological perspective.

If you have information about other actions, you can add it as a comment to this post. (Please include links and/or details of the action if you can.) If you have questions for the sponsors of an individual action, you can usually reach them through the links at their map entry. If you have questions for me, I may be reached by email at the address on the About page of this site.

Last March 3 update | There are now 122 events in 33 states on the map.

4:25 am California time | A report posted on the Occupy CA blog about an hour and a half ago says that the Humanities building at CSU Fullerton has been “barricaded from the inside.” More when I get it.

4:50 am | According to this calendar, today is a regular class day at Fullerton. I can’t quite tell by Googling whether the building under occupation houses classrooms, but if it does, that would make this (to my knowledge) the first of the more than two dozen California campus building occupations this year that has sought to shut down a classroom building while classes were in session.

Update: As regular commenter “*” notes, the December takeover of the Business building at San Francisco State and the first occupation of Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall in November both forced the cancellation of classes.

5:20 am | Occupy CA’s post now says the building has been barricaded with “some fairly heavy materials,” and includes an eight-paragraph statement from the occupiers. The bulk of their statement consists of a critique of the ideas of Michael Parker, CSU Fullerton’s Director of University Planning. Specifically, they challenge his contention that “esoteric offerings such as literature, philosophy, fine arts, and so forth” are only part of the university’s “core” mission to the extent that “they are clearly related to practical concerns.” They are occupying the Humanities building, they say, as a symbol of their rejection of that “University of Phoenix business model.”

6:20 am | A student activist blog at Fullerton, Make Believe Committee, has the occupiers’ statement. The blog doesn’t identify itself as being a project of the students behind the occupation, but I wouldn’t be particularly surprised to find out that it is.

7:30 am | Occupy CA reported about forty minutes ago that police are inside the occupied building “talking to” 15-18 occupiers. Four others who were detained earlier have been released.

8:30 am | Occupy CA is now reporting that the police entered the building through underground service tunnels, and that all of the occupiers have been cited and released.

9:50 am | Commenter mtd says that the occupiers weren’t cited, just released. The non-students among them were ordered to stay off campus for a week, but the students received no sanctions. No confirmation of this, but I thought I’d mention it.

“There is an enigmatic quality about March 4th, and no-one can foresee what will happen. We eagerly anticipate this uncertainty.”

–from the video Berkeley Pre-Game Communiqué: That’s Not the Sky, it’s the Ceiling

I’m not sure what to make of this, but a news release just sent out by the University of California at San Diego says the campus police have completed their investigation of the library noose incident and “filed” it with the San Diego City Attorney “as a possible hate crime.”

Does this mean the UCSD police disbelieve the student’s account? Does it mean that a prosecution is likely? I have no idea. But it seems pretty clear that this latest development isn’t going to ameliorate the confusion that has surrounded the event since it happened.

I’m turning off comments on this post, because I’m not interested in arguing about a subject that none of us have enough data to form thoughtful opinions on. If you’ve got information to share, you can reach me at the email address on the site’s About page, and I’ll be happy to pass it along.

Rumors of this incident have been circulating all day, and they’ve just been officially confirmed. The statement doesn’t seem to be up on the UCSD website yet, so I’m posting it below. (Later: It’s up on their site too.)

3:40 pm California time | I have to say, I’m flabbergasted by UCSD’s inability to get out in front of these stories. It took them fifteen hours to put out a statement on the hood incident, which has been circulating on Twitter all day. Just four hours ago, a campus spokesperson told the UC Davis student newspaper that they didn’t know anything about it.

Meanwhile, it took UC President Mark Yudof just six hours to post to Twitter debunking a joke site that claimed he’d resigned.

5:20 pm | Commenter Jeremy has noted that Seuss published some racist cartoons early in his career, and that it’s possible the hood was a reference to that. Doesn’t seem particularly likely to me, but it’s possibile.

Having said that, though, I’ll say this as well: I’m really not interested in having this post’s comment thread swamped with idle speculation about the motivation behind the incident. If you’ve got solid information, by all means share it, but if you’re considering commenting just to tell us how sure you are that it’s a hoax, or real, or a prank, or whatever, don’t bother. We’re all aware of what the possibilities are.

5:00 am Wednesday | I didn’t mention this last night, but police say that in addition to the Klan hood, a rose was found in the fingers of the Seuss statue.

The symbolism of carrying a rose at UCSD this week is worth noting, as students anonymously left roses on desks in the library on Monday, and encouraged students to carry them throughout the day as a gesture of community and solidarity in the struggle for “safety, dignity, and equal opportunity” on campus.

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