Well, Wait a Minute…

May 6, 2009 in Campus Press, Campus Protests, Media, Police, Student Bashing, Student vs. Student, Students, Town and Gown | by | Leave a comment

I love student media, and I don’t think it gets anywhere near the respect it deserves. I don’t like it when people pick on the campus press. But when a student newspaper adopts the bad habits of the mainstream media, and publishes a sloppy, hostile-to-students story, it should get called on it, I think.

Yesterday’s Kent State News includes a piece on the aftermath of the local student riot that happened a couple of weeks back, a riot that some have blamed on police misconduct. The title of this story? 

“Some incoming freshmen rethinking their decision to attend KSU after riots.”

But there’s a problem — the article doesn’t give any evidence that the headline’s claim is true.

The piece says the mother of incoming student Kayla Will is having second thoughts about Kent State in the wake of the riots, but that Kayla isn’t. “These riots,” the article says, “don’t impact her desire to go to Kent State.”

Another entering student, Leah Friedlander, says her parents “trust me to stay out of harm’s way.” According to the paper, “she has been planning on attending Kent State for pre-pharamacy since her junior year of high school, and the riots didn’t change her decision.”

That’s the total of the interviewing the paper did. Two students, neither of whom is rethinking anything.

And if the university itself is worried, they’re not saying so — they sent out a letter to incoming students to reassure them, one administrator says, but they’ve received only “minimal calls” about the issue.

This article is grounded in the premise that last month’s student rioters harmed the image of Kent State among likely attendees, but the article provides no support for that premise. None.

Pre-Finals Drug Bust at U of Illinois Yields Many Arrests, Few Drugs

May 5, 2009 in Access, Administration, Civil Liberties, Drug Policy, Fraternities and Sororities, Police, Student Bashing, Students | by | Leave a comment

A yearlong drug investigation at the University of Illinois culminated in more than two dozen arrests last week.

But all the cops found was six ounces of pot and some Xanax.

The UI campus police launched “Operation Thunder Strike” last fall, and the force decided to make “a little bit of a splash” before the end of the semester, according to Lt. Roy Acree. They obtained search warrants and arrest warrants for seventeen people, and swept in on three fraternity houses and several apartments starting last Tuesday.

They made twenty-five arrests, twenty-one of UI students, but Acree said the total haul was “180 grams of cannabis, numerous pieces of drug paraphernalia, cocaine residue, and some Xanax pills.” Cops also confiscated two vehicles, three television sets, two computers, and about three thousand dollars in cash.

Spring classes end tomorrow at UI, and final exams start this Friday.

 

(The Chronicle of Higher Education swallowed the campus cops’ line on this bust, by the way, but the comment thread on their story is turning into a real doozy.)

College Town Mayor Pushes $300 Student Tax

May 5, 2009 in Access, Civil Liberties, Finances, Politics, Student Bashing, Students, Town and Gown, Tuition and Fees | by | 3 comments

The mayor of Providence, Rhode Island is looking to close a $17 million budget deficit on the backs of the city’s college students.

Mayor David Cicilline is proposing a new tax of $300 per year on all undergraduate and graduate students in the city’s four private universities. The flat tax, which he’s calling a “student municipal impact fee,” would — if he gets his way — be paid as part of students’ tuition bills.

Story via the usually-excellent blog The Kept Up Academic Librarian, which unfortunately gave it the pointlessly anti-student headline “You Attend College Here So You May As Well Pay Taxes.”

Two Student Govt Reps Lose Posts Over Use of Racial Slurs

May 5, 2009 in Campus Protests, Civil Liberties, Gender, Race, Student Government, Student Power, Student vs. Student, Students | by | Leave a comment

A second Binghamton Student Association representative who used racist slurs against an SA vice president last week has lost his position as a result.

As I reported last Saturday, representative Mike Lombardi resigned from the SA days after telling vice president for finance Alice Liou to “go eat a dog,” while Ehlad Bar-Shai, who had taunted Liou for having “squinty eyes” prior the Lombardi incident, was elected chair of the SA’s Student Assembly in a close vote.

News of Bar-Shai’s comments spread widely on campus after his election, however, and a protest rally was held last weekend calling for him to be removed from office. 

Last night, at the final Assembly meeting of the year, Bar-Shai asked to make a formal apology, but a motion to reconsider his election was introduced before he was able to do so.

Bar-Shai argued that the motion to reconsider was out of order, but was turned aside. When the Assembly approved the motion Bar-Shai and several supporters withdrew from the meeting, causing it to lose quorum.

But the Assembly was eventually able to re-establish quorum, a new election was held, and incumbent Assembly chair Josh Berk, who had lost to Bar-Shai at the previous meeting, was re-elected by a vote of 15-4.

Stanford Students Get Answers on Torture

May 5, 2009 in Campus Press, Dorms, Faculty, Media, Politics, Student Power, Students | by | Leave a comment

Ari Melber of The Nation has put together a sharp overview of the flap over Condoleeza Rice’srecent comments on torture, and his piece does a better job than any other I’ve read of highlighting what a student power moment this is.

Three Stanford students — one with a video camera, the other two just asking questions — buttonholed Rice at a dorm event, and changed the direction of America’s debate on Bush-era torture policy. There was none of the preening or shouting that the talk show pundits wallow in, just good, solid questions and deeply inadequate answers. (At least one of the questioners didn’t even know he was on camera — he was just engaging with Rice in the moment.)

And the three students who made it happen? Sammy Abusrur, is a sports reporter for the Stanford Daily. Jeremy Cohn is a public policy major and an alto saxophonist in the Stanford marching band. Reyna Garcia, who taped the exchange and uploaded it to YouTube, is a sophomore.

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

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